THE CHINA TRADE AND ITS STRANGE RESULT ;The Cgronieles of
the East India Company trading to China, 1635-1834. By Hosea Ballou Morse, LL.D. (Clarendon _Press. 4 Vols. 788. net.) • *PR. MORSE is to be heartily congratulated upon his exhaustive 'iteConnt of the East India COmpanY's trade with China, drawn from 'the India Office records .and elucidated .by the -author's special knowledge of Chinese -administrative and ;commercial practice. The: four volumes .describerin full for :tie. first time the rise and developmentOf our Far Eastern :trade which was the- necessary complement to our trade with India. England had little except bullion which India would take in exchange for. her calico, indigo and silk; we couldnot spare enough gold for the purpose and found it hard to obtain a sufficient amount of silver. _But in China our mer- chants could buy. gold and copper which were always accept- able in India. For this reason the company "perieveredr in face of great obstacles, in cultiVating the China trade.
- The Portuguese and the Dutch put every difficulty in our ivay. But the Chinese officials were the chief source of trouble. Throughout the .period covered by Dr. Mork, ending with the abolition 'of the cOmpany's monopoly Of the direct trade between England and 'Canton, the officials Were; as they still are, corrupt and arbitrary in the extreme. The difficulties which Hong Kong is now having with Canton are much the _ .
same as those which the Company's captains and supercargoes had to face in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Chinese merchants were always willing to trade and, even in the early days, were fairly honest in their dealings. Btit the horde of greedy officials who preyed upon, them took full advantage of the helplessness of their English customers. It says much for the determination of our merchants, and for the profitable nature of the trade, that the English factory at Canton was established and maintained.
Dr. Morse's book abound.s in interesting detail. Thus, on the early voyages the captains refused to load tea, if they could help it, because there was no demand for it at home. The first tea, according to Dr. Morse, was brought to England from Amoy, where the local pronunciation of the Chinese 'symbol for tea is "tay," and not " cha " as at CantOn. Not until Anne's reign did the tea trade begin to develop. The china which collectors prize was brought as ballast, in cases at the bottom of the ships' holds. Not till about 1780 did -OM. merchants begin to give direct orders to the Imperial china factory at Kingtecheng. The silk trade was hampered by the home tariff, which was for a time prohibitive against woven silks, whether from China or from France.
Dr. Morse does not fail to remind us how the Continental competition in the tea trade helped to lose us America. Hol- land and France imported vast quantities of tea and, not wishing to drink it, smuggled it into this country and into Anierica. Our attempts to stop the smuggling traffic led to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and to the revolt. It was an unexpected outcome of our age-long efforts to build up a Far Eastern trade, in which,- by the way, the Americans were to become between 1800 and 1834 our keenest competitors, as they still are.
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