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C O N C L U S I O N  THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM TODAY, FOREIGN ARCHIVES HOLD the best and most detailed accounts available about the Hong merchants, the Canton junk traders, the dozens of linguists, compradors and pilots, and the tens of thousands of other Chinese involved in trade. No records were kept or preserved about these matters because they were not important to the state. Some Chinese merchants became extremely wealthy and built large estates, but their fortunes did not last and the memories of many of their lives have vanished. This was not owing to deliberate or intentional efforts by the architects of the Canton System to undermine or prejudice local interests. Rather, it was a result of the intense focus on state matters that constantly overshadowed individual concerns. The only records protected and preserved were those that concerned matters of state. All other Chinese records from the lower echelons have vanished. These documents numbered in the millions (and possibly billions). They included 140 years of daybooks from the local customhouses in the delta; thousands of chops issued to tranship merchandise between Whampoa and Canton; hundreds of Grand Chop inspection slips kept by customs to verify document authenticity (Plate 1); 140 years of Hoppos’ ledgers recording the exports and imports of every foreign ship and junk; thousands of ship measuring calculations (Plate 27); dozens of articles drawn up for each foreign company spelling out the terms and stipulations of trade; hundreds of passes issued to foreigners for traversing the West River (Plate 22); thousands of reports from the express sampans in the delta informing the Hoppos of the maritime activities downriver; hundreds of letters, decrees and notices that were sent to foreign factories and ships; and hundreds of linguists, compradors and pilots’ chops granting permission to service the foreigners. 178 The Canton Trade We know that the Hong merchants kept detailed records, as well, because they were often asked to look up previous transactions that had transpired when questions arose of something that was still owed, miss-packed or undelivered. Occasionally, merchants also brought up past debts that the foreigners had failed to pay, which they could verify from their records. We also know that the merchants kept copies of the hundreds of contracts they signed with foreigners because sometimes they had to consult those documents to check the terms they had agreed on in past years. All these records show up in the foreign archives written in Chinese so we have physical proof that they existed (Plates 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 17–20, 25–6, 40–1). But merchants did not dare to keep those records any longer than what they needed them probably out of fear that they could fall into the hands of greedy officials. This was another sign of the lack of protection to Chinese business. Today, only a few hundred of these detailed Chinese records are known to exist and all are in foreign archives. The lack of attention to the restoration of historical records is another clear sign that local individual interests and the preservation of their local heritage (including the accumulation and long-term protection of local wealth) were not part of the basic mentality of the Canton System. The part of the history that has suffered most is the junk trade, which involved thousands of vessels and tens of thousands of people over hundreds of years, but there are now almost no documents to tell their stories. The hundreds of detailed Chinese trade records used in this study, from the Swedish, Dutch, Danish, British, American and Portuguese archives, are also clear and indisputable evidence that such documents were regularly created in Canton. From information in the foreign records we have been able to describe the sophisticated and systematic record-keeping policies and practices of both the Yuehaiguan, in the control of trade, and the Chinese merchants, in the carrying out of trade. The only detailed Chinese records from any of the customhouses in the delta known to have survived, however, are those that were sent to Macao, and they exist today solely because they were important to the Portuguese.1 The only records that were systematically protected and preserved in China were official correspondences to and from the court in Beijing. Those documents, however, contain only information about individuals involved in trade whose actions in some way concerned the state. A short note might have been recorded about Chinese who amassed debts with foreigners, committed crimes...

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