Synopses & Reviews
Nine essays discuss the first commercial encounters between a China on the verge of systemic social change and a United States struggling to assert itself globally as a distinct nation after the Revolutionary War, from the arrival in Canton of the first American ship in the 1870s, to the 1844 Treaty of Wangxia in Macao after the First Opium War, to Secretary of State John Hay's forging of the Open Door policy in 1899. Broad in scope, the essays are attuned to the activities of competing European traders, especially the British, in Canton, Macao, and the Pearl River Delta.
Kendall Johnson is director of the American Studies Program and associate professor at the University of Hong Kong.
Synopsis
Through engaging interdisciplinary analysis of commercial themes, this book interprets under-appreciated interactions between China and a very young United States in the first decades after the American Revolutionary War. With its attention to visual culture, Narratives of Free Trade yields a fresh interpretation of documents that are crucial to understanding the evolving relationship between two of the twenty-first century's superpowers.
Synopsis
This collection of essays discusses the first commercial encounters between a China on the verge of social transformation and a fledgling United States struggling to assert itself globally as a distinct nation after the Revolutionary War with Great Britain. In early accounts of these encounters, commercial activity enabled cross-cultural curiosity, communication and even mutual respect. But it also involved confrontation as ambitious American traders pursued lucrative opportunities, often embracing British-style imperialism in the name of "free trade." The book begins in the 1780s with the arrival in Canton of the very first American ship The Empress of China and moves through the nineteenth century, with Caleb Cushing negotiating the Treaty of Wangxia in Macao after the First Opium War and, at the century's close, Secretary of State John Hay forging the Open Door Policy (1899). Considering Sino-American relations in their broader context, the nine essays are attuned to the activities of competing European traders, especially the British, in Canton, Macao, and the Pearl River Delta.