From the Daily Beast: How the China Trade Helped Make America
This year’s presidential election has brought the latest round of China bashing, but the anti-Chinese strain in American politics ignores our long and highly profitable history of trade and commerce with the country writes Eric Jay Dolin, the author of When America First Met China.
China bashing has become a cottage
industry during this Presidential season. Whether it’s griping about the
trade deficit, decrying the amount of our debt China owns, or skewering
China’s currency policies, Americans see bogeymen around nearly every
corner. The merits of such concerns are debatable, and I gladly leave
those arguments to policy wonks and modern-day China watchers. But, it
is important to remember that our relationship with China goes all the
way back to the beginning of the Republic, and in those dramatic and
tempestuous years of America’s youth, the China trade provided a much
needed, and greatly appreciated boost to the American economy. Back
then, China wasn’t a threat, it was a golden opportunity.
It
is not surprising that Americans pursued the China trade as soon as the
American Revolution ended. After all, American colonists had long had a
love affair with things Chinese. From the mid-1600s up until the eve of
the revolution, the British East India Company supplied the American
colonists with Chinese goods, most importantly tea, which Americans
consumed at a rate of more than one billion cups annually in the early
1770s.
Before
the revolution, Americans had been barred from entering the China trade
on account of the British East India Company’s monopoly on Far Eastern
commerce. But when America won the war, the Company’s monopoly no longer
applied, and Americans were free to trade with China, and trade they
did.
Between
1784, when the Empress of China blazed the trail, and the end of the
War of 1812, nearly three hundred American ships made a total of 618
voyages to Canton.
These
ships carried cargoes of ginseng, sea otter and fur seal skins, opium,
sandalwood, and Spanish silver dollars, which were used to purchase
Chinese tea, silk, porcelain, and other exotic items.
Among
the merchants who took the lead in the China trade were John Jacob
Astor of New York, Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, and Elias Hasket
Derby of Salem. Their China trading and other business activities made
them among the wealthiest people in the United States, with Derby
becoming the country’s first millionaire, Astor its first
multimillionaire, and Girard nearly equaling Astor’s fortune.
Although
merchants benefited most from the China trade, they weren’t the only
ones who were enriched. During the Revolution, much of America’s
merchant fleet was destroyed by the British navy, which tenaciously
targeted American ships at sea and in port. That meant that new ships
had to be built for the burgeoning China trade, bringing shipyards back
to life and employing thousands of men in various trades.
Those
ships had to be outfitted, employing thousands more, and they had to be
manned, which created a high demand for officers and crew. Each time a
ship returned, its owners had to pay customs fees to the government, and
when the ships’ cargoes were sold in shops they created another source
of revenue.
Thus
in many ways the impacts of the China trade were felt far and wide. The
money funneled into shipbuilding, outfitting, and manning the ships,
paying the taxes, and selling the goods cascaded through the economy and
made it stronger. The emerging China trade also placed the United
States on a firmer footing to defend its rights upon the seas by serving
as a nursery for seamen who could be called upon by the merchant marine
and naval forces to help defend the country.
The most prominent and successful China merchants plowed their millions into a wide array of business ventures—including railroads, banks, and mining ventures—that helped build America’s nineteenth-century economic and industrial might.
After
the War of 1812, up through the Civil War, the China trade continued to
enrich merchants and bolster the economy, at times exceeding 4 percent
of the nation’s foreign commerce. The China trade also led to the
development of clipper ships, the “greyhounds of the sea,” arguably the
most magnificent sailing vessels ever built, which were designed to get
to China and back quickly, because the fresher the tea, the higher the
prices that could be charged.
The
China trade was an early engine of American investment. The most
prominent and successful China merchants plowed their millions into a
wide array of business ventures—including railroads, banks, and mining
ventures—that helped build America’s nineteenth-century economic and
industrial might. And many China merchants invariably became
philanthropists, leaving behind lasting legacies.
These
American fortunes, and all their good works, however, must be weighed
against the damage that was done in acquiring them. Many of America’s
China traders earned a significant portion of their wealth from the
morally and legally indefensible opium trade. And though the Opium Wars
(1839-42 and 1856-60) were not American wars, Americans still bear a
heavy responsibility for having nurtured the drug trade.
Perhaps
the most enduring, and certainly the most beautiful legacy of the early
China trade can be seen in art museums and people’s homes, which
contain exquisite objects brought over from the Middle Kingdom.
So,
when you read the heated, and often overblown news coverage on the
tribulations of the modern China trade, bear in mind that we have been
trading with China for more than 225 years, and in many ways, that has
been a good thing.