AMERICA’S FIRST ADVENTURE IN CHINA: Trade, Treaties, Opium, and Salvation by John R. Haddad (review)

In his America’s First Adventure in China: Trade, Treaties, Opium, and Salvation, John R. Haddad succinctly traces Americans’ first experiences in China, from the voyage of the Empress of China in 1784 to diplomat Anson Burlingame’s death in 1870.

Haddad masterfully tells of early American dreams of striking it rich in China. John Ledyard’s plans for selling American furs in China seemed too risky. An alternative venture—selling American ginseng in China—floundered quickly as American ships brought too much of the desired good, flooding the market. American religious Millennialism brought the evangelical fervor of ambitious missionaries to Sino-American relations. Haddad shows that the greatest impact of evangelical encounters was felt in other fields, most notably medicine and linguistic/cultural exchange. As Haddad explains, by the late 1830s, all Americans in China had come to define themselves in relation to the opium trade, either as participants (the moneyed aristocracy) or as critics (the moral aristocracy). Ironically, even Americans who opposed the trade benefited from the opening of China by the British in the First Opium War.

Haddad proves that early American ventures in China should not be understood as mere miniature versions of British diplomacy. Absent the framework of the bureaucratic structures and military protection given British subjects, Americans in China found their own (American) way. Haddad succinctly connects the thoughts and actions of Americans in China to their kindred at home. Early American trade with China expressed the new republic’s increasingly democratic and decentralized qualities, with 600 American ships visiting China between 1784 and 1814. While no company was able to monopolize the China trade, Thomas Perkin’s Perkins and Company offered a prime example of Yankee systematic business organization. Anson Burlingame’s mission to China was infused with the moral imperatives forged in the American struggle against slavery, cooperation with China being the equivalence of the anti-slavery cause for Burlingame. Burlingame’s Treaty, like the Fourteenth Amendment, was meant to promote equality.

Haddad delineates Caleb Cushing’s success in bringing a greater international stature to American China diplomacy. In his chapter on “Centrifugal Force: The Spread of People, Goods, Capital, and Ideas”, Haddad skillfully blends the good with the bad, noting both the mutual advantages gained by Sino-American exchanges as well as the negative consequences. His chapter on the Taiping Rebellion traces the amazing stories of American involvement in the bloodiest civil war in history.

America’s First Adventure in China is erudite yet delightful to read. Haddad gives the reader dozens of well-told historical vignettes linked around central themes, most notably the connections between Americans’ actions in China and intellectual currents at home. While one might have hoped for even more Chinese perspectives on early Sino-American relations, readers gain a thorough understanding of both the novelties of the early encounters between Americans and Chinese and the factors involved in the relative maturation of Sino-American affairs by the middle of the nineteenth century.