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169 NINE Western Merchants, Local Interests, and Christian Penetration A New Interpretation of the Canton System I n 1755 a British ship docked at Dinghai, a port city near Ningbo in Zhejiang province, and its captain formally requested permission to trade with local merchants. Later, when the Qianlong emperor reviewed the reports from his officials posted in the area, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Told that the foreign merchants had chosen Dinghai because they disliked Guangzhou (which they called Canton), he called for reopening a customs office to serve Zhejiang. The emperor said, “The British merchants may choose between the two cities—Ningbo and Guangzhou, that is—themselves.”1 But this decision was met with opposition in both Zhejiang and Guangdong, and in 1757 the emperor issued anew edict prohibiting Western merchants from entering any port but Guangzhou. This major adjustment to the 1684 open-door policy came to be called the Canton system. The birth of the Canton system raises many questions: Why did the Qianlong emperor agree to open the port of Ningbo? Why did local officials object? How did their views influence imperial policy? What factors led Qianlong to change his mind? Why did he show concern about the penetration of Christianity into China in his edict on instituting the Canton system? Did Qianlong’s decision to limit Western trade to Guangzhou imply a desire to isolate China from outside influence? The answers to these questions , central to understanding the rise of the Canton system, are the focus of this chapter. No aspect of eighteenth-century Chinese maritime policy—even of Chinese maritime history—has been discussed more frequently in academic and popular writings than the Canton system instituted in 1757. It has generally been treated as the final step in the Manchu isolation of China from the outside world; it has become synonymous with Qing maritime policy prior to the Opium War. It doomed China’s economy and society, many have said.2 Behind this interpretation are two assumptions: The first is that from 1758 on China relied exclusively on the Canton system for contact with the outside world.The second is that the exclusive reliance on Western merchants for contact with the outside world led to isolation. 170 Chapter 9 Until recently few scholars have examined the rise of the Canton system by thoroughly exploring the relevant source materials and combining commercial with intellectual and religious histories, let alone sharply questioning the Eurocentric attitude behind the dominant interpretation. Some scholars still stress the centrality of the emperor in the policy process.3 In proposing a new explanation of the rise of the Canton system, I would argue that the dominant interpretation overestimates the contribution of Guangzhou and the Western merchants who trafficked there to China’s relations with foreign countries. In fact, many international channels , especially through Chinese private traders, remained open after the inauguration of the Canton system.The suggestion that the Canton system closed the Chinese gate to the rest of the world is simply erroneous. Also, the routine claim that Qianlong’s decision arose out of his ignorance and fear of the outside world needs to be reconsidered. As discussed below, the emperor himself had planned to open Ningbo to Westerners, a fact overlooked for too long. Explaining how he came to change is mind is not easy.First,when Kangxi announced the open-door policy,many Chinese ports were opened to trade with European merchants. Those merchants— not the Qing—opted to concentrate at a single city,Guangzhou.Second,the Guangdong government and local merchants persuaded Qianlong to give up his plan of opening the new ports to Westerners.Third,in the policy process, Qianlong tried to achieve three somewhat conflicting goals at the same time: to ensure the importation of foreign technologies, to lower unemployment, and to eliminate the potential threat caused by the Christian penetration into China.These factors led him to choose the Canton system. 1 Not long ago, Andre Gunder Frank showed in his well-known ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age that throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries China occupied a central place in the global economy via trade by land and sea.4 But his conclusion would have been more persuasive if he had noted how Manchu rulers consciously opened trade in cities not only in the frontier regions but also on the southeastern coast. In 1684 the Kangxi emperor lifted the maritime ban against overseas trade. All the major southeastern coastal...

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