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78 John R. Haddad us.” Among these, he found especially amusing a Chinese mousetrap, of a design patented in America, “that has been used in China for ages.” In short, the exhibit proved to him that his preconceptions regarding the innovation of the Chinese were wrong.67 In favorably describing Chinese civilization as accomplished, durable, complex, and even innovative, Dunn was merely conveying his own assessment to readers of the Descriptive Catalogue. Yet he also had a rhetorical strategy , as readers discovered when they met with his views on the opium trade at the end of booklet. For if a reader had agreed with Dunn’s overall appraisal of the Chinese up until this point, outrage was the only suitable reaction to the opium trade. It was true, Dunn conceded, that through the sale of opium, the British had accomplished their objective in that a trade imbalance previously favoring China had reversed course (Dunn estimated that $20 million flowed annually out of China and into the English economy). But what were the moral ramifications of this apparently effective economic strategy? “Yet if the sum were ten times as great as it is,” Dunn wrote, “it could not affect the question in its moral bearings. Opium is a poison, destructive alike of the health and morals of those who use it habitually, and, therefore, the traffic in it […] is nothing less than making merchandise of the bodies and souls of men.” In short, as silver bullion moved from the East to the West, filling English treasuries with wealth, morality flowed in the opposite direction, leaving England morally bankrupt. Though much of the culpability deservedly rested on English shoulders, Dunn was quite familiar with the trading practices of his own compatriots after living for eight uninterrupted years with them in the foreign factories. “But it is not England alone that is to blame in this matter,” he wrote “[M]ost of our own merchants in Canton are guilty in the same way, and to an equal extent.” In mentioning American involvement, Dunn hoped that he could raise the ire of ordinary citizens. And to further augment their outrage, he explained the relationship between opium and the Protestant missions. As has been stated, Dunn was raised a Quaker; Quakers usually did not proselytize and certainly did not have any presence in China. Yet Dunn knew that America was then in the throes of a massive evangelical movement (now called the Second Great Awakening) and that the majority of the visitors to his museum were Protestants who supported the foreign missions. Acutely aware of this audience, Dunn explained exactly why missionaries were encountering so much resistance in China. The “grasping avarice” China of the American Imagination 79 of opium traders, he wrote, undermines the moral and spiritual message of the missionaries and “sets at naught every Christian obligation before the very eyes of the people whom it sought to convert!” The Chinese would never choose to convert to Christianity as long as the most visible emissaries from a Christian nation, the merchants, continued to blight their society.68 In this way, the generally uplifting Descriptive Catalogue ended on an ominous note. Responses to the Exhibit Did Dunn succeed in his didactic mission? If Brantz Mayer’s shifting perceptions of the museum followed a sequence shared by others, then he did. Initially, Mayer expressed his impressions of the museum by employing a vocabulary of magic and fantasy: “The spectator seems placed in a world of enchantment—the scene is so unreal and fairylike.” Yet though bewitched at first, he eventually shook off the trance and proceeded to use the exhibits to learn about China: “Never have I derived more instruction in the brief space of a few hours—never have I experienced more pleasure in the pursuit of knowledge —never has my imagination been more excited—never my mind more interested.” Though initially entranced by the idea of escaping to a “world of enchantment” in the same manner as Caroline Howard King, Mayer eventually used the museum for its intended purpose: “the pursuit of knowledge.”69 Mayer also went so far as to state that “a man may learn more of China… in a single visit to Mr. Dunn’s Collection, then could be acquired in a month’s reading, or even in a voyage to Canton.”70 A guidebook for Philadelphia echoed this sentiment, declaring “every one who takes pleasure in accurate knowledge, will here find, in a few hours, that which cannot be...

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