CANTON COMMERCIAL

SYSTEM
What was canton
• The trading system that lasted from 1700 to 1842 on China’s south coast was called the “Canton system” because of this
city’s dominance.
• Guangzhou (which Europeans called Canton), an ancient city and one of the largest in South China, had flourished as an
administrative and trading center for over 1000 years before the Westerners arrived. Arab and Persian traders had lived in
its foreign quarters under the Tang dynasty since the 8th century.
• Like most traditional Chinese cities, Canton had a large wall surrounding the central districts, major avenues within the
wall, extensive market districts outside the wall, and constant contact by riverboats with the surrounding countryside and
distant ports.
• Chinese cities were planned as segregated environments, with separate districts for different purposes.
Rise of the system
• The Ming emperors confined Western traders to the town of Macau, but the Qing emperors expanded their access in the
18th century. The Qing rulers were Manchus from northeast China who conquered the core of Han China in the mid 17th
century.
• They called many of the foreign peoples “tributaries,” meaning those who came to give tribute or gifts to the emperor out
of gratitude for his benevolent rule. The Westerners who arrived in China to trade in the 18th century joined these
tributary peoples.
• From the Qing official point of view, Westerners were just one of hundreds of different peoples who admired and sought
to profit from their relationship with the flourishing empire.
• Since the early 17th century, the Dutch and the English had tried to gain trading privileges with China as the Portuguese
had done in Macau, but the Chinese rulers prevented regular access until they had secured control of Taiwan in 1683. Then
the Chinese and foreigners began to negotiate regular terms of trade at several different ports. By the early 18th century,
Canton had emerged as the most convenient port for both the Chinese and foreigners.
• The Manchu court favored foreign trade as long as it was conducted in a stable and predictable fashion under government
regulation. They appointed the superintendent of customs, or hoppo, as the official responsible for collecting customs
duties and managing orderly trade in Canton.
• The Qing government tightened control in 1741 by requiring all foreigners to leave Canton and return to Macau when the
trading season ended, and officially restricted all trade to Canton after 1757. The foreigners constantly complained about
these restrictions, but the fact that trade grew steadily through the 18th century shows that they could do very profitable
business despite the regulations
• While in Canton, the foreign merchants formed a separate community. On the Chinese side, a special guild of merchants,
the Co-hong, obtained a monopoly over trade with the foreigners. After paying the hoppo substantial sums for the
privilege of trading with foreigners, these hong merchants profited greatly from their access to foreign trade. Although the
Qing emperors kept their distance from the foreign traders, they gained a great deal of personal revenue from them. The
duties from trade went directly to the imperial household.
• The foreigners lived in buildings called “factories,” which included living quarters, warehouses, and offices for trade. (These
factories did not manufacture anything; the name comes from “factor,” an older English word for “commercial agent.”) The
Chinese called them “hongs,” or merchant shops. The factory buildings lined up along the waterfront, each with its
distinctive national flag
• The British were the first to arrive, but soon after the Austrians, Danish, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, and Americans
followed them. The entire quarter acquired the name “Thirteen Factories.” The foreign quarter burned down in fires in
1822, 1841, and 1856, after which it was moved to Shamian Island farther up the river
• The foreigners in Canton were immersed in a dense, old Chinese city, of which they formed a small part. Despite the
restrictions, they were still part of Chinese commercial life. From their factories, they could peer into a vast, wealthy
continent whose riches made all the difficulties worthwhile. They faced risks of fire, disease, and social unrest along with
their Chinese counterparts. They pressed for greater access to the interior of China, but for nearly 150 years could not
move out of their profitable ghetto.
• Although their impressive facades copied Western classical designs, behind the facades the factories looked very much like
typical Cantonese merchant buildings. They had a long, narrow hallway down the middle, with rooms off to the sides.
Chinese contractors provided nearly all of the construction materials, including low-fired brick, tile roofs, paving stones,
lime, iron, marble, and bamboo.
• The British supplied teakwood windows and stairs, iron door locks and stoves, and glass window panes. Small courtyards
were scattered through the building complex. The bedrooms upstairs, and the clerks’ rooms, were simple.
Porcelain punch bowl, China, ca. 1785: A finely
drawn view of the “Hongs”—as the Chinese
called the Western factories in Canton—
appears on this 1785 punch bowl (shown with
enlarged detail). The first European
warehouses in Canton were built in 1748. The
gates open to the waterfront where many
small Chinese boats supported the foreign
trade. The circumference of the bowl shows
the flags of some of the trading nations,
including Holland, France, Imperial Austria,
Sweden, Great Britain, and Denmark. /
Peabody Essex Museum
A Tea Tasters
Office, Whitmans
Hong,” 1888 by
Warner Varnham:
This rare view of
the interior of a
hong shows one of
its most important
offices—the tea
tasting room. Since
tea was China’s
most valuable
export, Chinese
specialists worked
for the foreign
merchants to
ensure that the
leaves were of the
highest quality. /
Peabody Essex
Museum
Canton’s fancy trade
• Fascinated by their new settlements, the traders commissioned Chinese artists to paint the foreign quarter. Oil painting
was a new skill for Chinese artists but they quickly learned the craft, producing paintings for resident foreigners and the
export trade.
• Spoilum (often given the Chinese name Guan Zuolin), the most talented of these Cantonese artists, learned the European
technique of reverse glass painting and began producing paintings in the 1770s. He copied mirror images of European
engravings onto the back of glass panes, and specialized in portraits of Europeans posed in front of Western landscapes
• He also produced some of the most famous paintings of Chinese hong merchants like Eshing and Puan Kee Qua. He was a
truly international artist. His paintings could end up in English country homes, in the homes of sea captains in Salem,
Massachusetts, or in the estates of hong merchants in Canton. His followers, including his grandson Lam Qua, continued to
produce large numbers of portraits, landscapes, and miniatures through the mid 19th century.
• Although the foreigners could not visit the rest of the city, they could rely on their Chinese collaborators to give them
views of the entire city. Most of the paintings focused on the factories themselves, but they also included views of the
landscape around Canton, the harbor, and the boats that served the foreign community.
• Foreign interest was so great that the Chinese artists introduced scenes of Canton into the traditional Chinese artistic
media of fans, bowls, and lacquer ware. They painted scenes of Canton on the export porcelain bowls, on figurines,
lacquered tables, silver mugs, and ivory carvings. Ordinary sailors as well as captains eagerly bought up the artists’
production. They also took orders from their wives at home for special products to be purchased in Canton.
Happenings at Canton
• he foreign community in Canton was comprised largely of young men out to make their fortunes, who left their families for
years at a time
• The number of ships arriving per year grew from about 20 in the 1760s to 300 in the 1840s. As each large ship held from
100 to 150 men, the total number of foreign traders increased from a few thousand to tens of thousands in 100 years, but
they lived in a city of millions of Chinese.
• the small number of Western men mingled with large groups of Chinese porters, shopkeepers, craftsmen, and families on
sampans. Many of these Chinese workers made their living from supplying provisions to the Western sailors and traders.
• The Cantonese lived not only on land but also on the water—on small boats that provided supplies for the foreign and
Chinese merchants, and on larger houseboats anchored in safe harbors
• Each trading company commissioned licensed Chinese merchants, called compradors, to take charge of provisioning the
factories and the ships. The comprador collected wages for all of his employees, and often organized the entire voyage
from Macau to Canton and back, taking care of official permits (“chops”), pilots, and supplies.
• His men would also live in and guard the factories when the traders had left.
• During the trading season a single ship could consume thousands of pounds of fruit, vegetables, pork, mutton, fish, and a
whole cow every two or three days.
• The sampan sellers provided all sorts of other services, too. Barbers served both the Chinese and Westerners. Many boats
provided coal, charcoal, and firewood for fuel, while others specialized in ships’ supplies. Many others raised ducks on
nearby farms and supplied eggs and duck meat to the ships.
• The “flower boats,” or floating brothels, were also a conspicuous sight in the harbor. The women on the boats lived in near
slavery to their procurers, who could be hong merchants or compradors who paid off the officials to allow the trade. Even
though it was illegal for women to enter the factories, compradors could smuggle them in secretly.
• The foreigners also hired “linguists” to communicate with the Chinese merchants and officials. Since the Qing court
prohibited foreigners from studying Chinese in Canton, nearly all the traders had to rely on these Chinese interpreters
• They had to speak Cantonese and Mandarin and write classical Chinese in order to work with the officials and local
population, and originally the main foreign language they used was Portuguese. After the 1730s, pidgin English developed
as the most common means of communication. This language mixed together Portuguese, English, Malay, and other
vocabulary with a syntax close to Chinese to create a business language of intercultural communication.
The great fire of 1822
• When disaster struck, as in 1773, 1777, and 1778, the foreigners and Chinese worked together to respond quickly; both
used their water-pumping fire engines. The linguists assembled to direct fire-fighting operations and help coordination
between Chinese and foreigners
• But the tightly packed wooden houses and shops of the Chinese city could easily go up in flames. On November 1, 1822, in
a cake shop outside the city wall, north of the factories, a baker set off a fire accidentally while he was melting sugar. In the
narrow streets, fanned by strong winds, the fire spread rapidly through the city, destroying thousands of shops.
• The foreign merchants could not obtain enough water for their fire engines, and the Chinese viceroy did not allow them to
destroy local houses to create a firebreak, but Chinese and foreigners together formed bucket brigades. They saved some
of their woolen goods, but the vulnerable shops on Hog Lane quickly ignited, destroying nearly all of the factories. The
flames were so fierce that the merchants and their staffs had to flee from the land onto their boats into the river.
• The greatest losers in the fire, however, were the Chinese shopkeepers and hong merchants, most of whose warehouses
were destroyed.
• The Western factories basically contained only warehouses, meeting rooms, and small bedrooms for their exclusively male
population. They were but outposts for a few businessmen on the vast Asian continent.