Canton Days: British Life and Death in China

by John M. Carroll

Overview

Canton Days offers the first comprehensive history of the British community in China from the mid-1700s to the end of the Opium War in 1842. During that period, Britons and other Westerners in China were restricted to trading and living in a tiny section of the city of Canton and the small Portuguese territory of Macao. At Canton, trade between China and the West was conducted through a group of Chinese merchant houses specially licensed by the Qing government. British encounters with China in this period have been seen mainly as a prelude to war, and Britons in China usually have been characterized as single-minded traders determined to open the Middle Kingdom by any means or missionaries bent on converting the Chinese “heathen” to Christianity. John M. Carroll challenges common assumptions about the British presence in China as he traces the lives and times of the expatriates at the heart of this vital center of trade and exchange. The author draws on a rich trove of archival sources to bring Canton and its leading figures to life, concluding with the deaths of three Britons, each revealing British concerns and anxieties about being in China. Written in a clear and lively style, his book will appeal to all readers interested in British imperial history, early modern Chinese history, and the worlds of expatriate and sojourning communities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538136287
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/13/2020
Pages:	358
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

John M. Carroll is professor of history at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong and A Concise History of Hong Kong.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Notes

Chapter 1 The Place, the System, and the People

The “Entrance of Pandemonium”

A “Perfect System”

Coping with the “Intolerable Restrictions”

“Various Petty Collisions”

Accommodation and Collaboration in the Contact Zone

“An Extraordinary Jargon”

“Two Living Streams or Tides of Human Beings”

Notes

Chapter 2 Communities and Personalities

Through American Eyes

Remaining in Canton

George Thomas Staunton’s Life in China

“Some Real Geniuses in Wit, Science, and Art”

“Good Works”

“Useful Knowledge”

Notes

Chapter 3 Life and Work

The “Ungallant” Exclusion

“Serious Illnesses in This Country”

Confinement and Routine

“United Together in a Kind of Brotherhood”

“The Harmony of Our Little Society”

Friendships

Staying On

Notes

Chapter 4 Outlets

Dinners and Parties

The Gardens at Fa-ti

Rowing and Regattas

“Turning Out” to Macao

In the Storm

Notes

Chapter 5 Commemorations and Institutions

“The Nautical Oracle of the World”

The British Chamber of Commerce

The Parsis

The Canton General Chamber of Commerce

Community through Grievances

Grievances, Character, and Conduct

Notes

Chapter 6 Factories, Fear, and Fire

Combustible Canton

The Great Fire of 1822

Frustration and Helplessness

Fire and “the Chinese Character”

Fire as Opportunity (or Not)

Fire and Grievances

Notes

Chapter 7 Robert Morrison’s Life in China

With the Americans

With the East India Company

The Company and Morrison’s Dictionaries

Morrison and the Press

Change and Uncertainty

The Superintendent of Trade and the Napier Mission

“A Loyal and Industrious Son”

Notes

Chapter 8 Dying in China

“Gonged to Death”

“He Carried to the Grave the Regrets of All”

“A Mysterious Secret”

Death and the British in China

Notes

Epilogue: Canton and Beyond

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

For nearly a century before 1842, the ‘factories,’ one tiny patch of ground in the great city we know as Guangzhou, formed China’s window on the world. John Carroll brings that hothouse arena vividly to life in this pioneering account of the Britons who lived, worked, dreamed, and died there. One still-powerful strand in modern China’s history began in this sliver of old Canton: now we have the book that helps us understand that place and time.

Robert Bickers

On the basis of fine research, Carroll has presented a virtual cyclorama of the British community in Canton during the decades prior to the Opium War. He has successfully brought together many aspects of that community’s life hitherto dealt with most often as separate subjects.

Richard Grace