The golden ghetto : the American commercial community at Canton and the shaping of American China policy, 1784-1844 / Jacques M. Downs.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Before the opening of the treaty ports in the 1840s, Canton was the only Chinese port where foreign merchants were allowed to trade. The Golden Ghetto takes us into the world of one of this city's most important foreign communities--the Americans--during the decades between the American Revolution of 1776 and the signing of the Sino-US Treaty of Wanghia in 1844. American merchants lived in isolation from Chinese society in sybaritic, albeit usually celibate luxury. Making use of exhaustive research, Downs provides an especially clear explanation of the Canton commercial setting generally and of the role of American merchants. Many of these men made fortunes and returned home to become important figures in the rapidly developing United States. The book devotes particular attention to the biographical details of the principal American traders, the leading American firms, and their operations in Canton and the United States. Opium smuggling receives especial emphasis, as does the important topic of early diplomatic relations between the United States and China. Since its first publication in 1997, The Golden Ghetto has been recognized as the leading work on Americans trading at Canton. Long out of print, this new edition makes this key work again available, both to scholars and a wider readership.

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CHOICE Review

Downs has written a comprehensive and pioneering study of the American commercial community in Canton (Guangzhou) in the six decades before the Opium War inaugurated the unequal treaty system in China. He vividly evokes Western life in the Canton factories (which referred not to manufacturing plants but to offices of Western business agents), and shows how US policies and business practices were transformed by the opium trade. Central to this study is a survey of American merchants in Canton and the firms they represented. Downs's book concludes with Caleb Cushing's mission to China and the negotiation of the Treaty of Wanghsia in 1844. His work is based on a thorough investigation of US archival sources, primarily papers of American merchants and firms. The Chinese side of the relationship is not covered so well; the author uses no Chinese sources, nor does he refer to the most up-to-date Western scholarship. Nevertheless, this book is the definitive study of the US community in pre-Opium War Canton. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. E. Entenmann St. Olaf College