“He is no more a Mandarin than one of our shopkeepers”

Yesterday I noted Dael Norwood’s article about a Chinese businessman named Punqua Wingchong, who got special permission from Thomas Jefferson’s administration to sail home during the embargo. Jefferson’s critics complained that Punqua was just a front man for John Jacob Astor.

Punqua had come to the U.S. of A. on his own, however. In 1807 he arrived on Nantucket on the Favorite, accompanied by a servant. In The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars, Frances Ruley Karttunen writes that the local diarist Keziah Fanning described him as: “a Chinaman that came with Mr. Whitney last fall from Canton. He is a merchant there. He is the color of our native whites.”

After Punqua’s return voyage in August 1808 became a political controversy, a New Yorker wrote to Secretary of State James Madison under the pseudonym “Columbus” to warn the administration that they had made a mistake:

Mr. Winchong who is represented as a China Mandarin I know well and knew him before he left Canton. He is no more a Mandarin than one of our shopkeepers is for that is his occupation. That he came away from China and must return by stealth I am sure of, as it is the only way a Chinese can visit a foreign country in a foreign vessel and Mr. Winchong has frequently told me that he came away from Canton without any Mandarin knowing it and he expected to return the same way, and I believe that should the Mandarines become acquainted with his visit to this country when he returns they would strip him of every cent he is worth. . . .

Since I left NewYork (my place of residence) on my Journey to this place I have had continual enquiries respecting the great Chinese Mandarin and I have in several instances related what I knew concerning him and I have just learnt that the Ship Beaver of near 500 Tons is permited to carry him and his property to Canton. This the Feds & Tories with a sneer observe is another proof of the wisdom of Mr. Jeffersons administration. I have sir now only to add that the Ship Beaver belongs to the bitterest opposers of the present administration and should they succeed with their tool Winchong in accomplishing their object they will laugh at those that granted the favor by way of showing their superior wisdom.

That Winchong does not possess 5000 Dollars in this country is my opinion for some time ago I recievd a letter from Mr. S. Whitney the gentleman that bro’t Winchong to this country stating that he wished me to be friendly to Winchong as he had not exceeding $500 Dollars with him and surely he ought to know. That Winchong holds notes of Shaw & Randall’s to a large amount and that he came to this country for the express purpose of collecting the same, is certain, but that House became bankrupts several years ago. Shaw is since dead and Randall with hard labour can scarcly support his indigent family. Therefore not a cent has been collected from them.

It would be cruel to the highest degree for any person to object to Mr. Winchong and the other chinese having permission to return to their native country but why is a ship of five hundred Tons necessary to carry them (and to return with a full Cargo). A small vessel certainly would be more expeditious (and particular at this season when they will have to take a circuitous and difficult route) and perhaps equally as comfortable.

By the time this letter reached the capital, Punqua’s ship had already sailed. But it points out some more connections between Punqua and Massachusetts.

When “Columbus” wrote, “the Ship Beaver belongs to the bitterest opposers of the present administration,” Norwood says he probably meant brothers James Perkins (shown above, courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum) and Thomas Handysyd Perkins, who were partners in that ship with Astor. The Perkinses were indeed Federalists—which is probably why they kept quiet and let Astor handle arrangements with his friends in the Jefferson administration.

Punqua’s “notes of Shaw & Randall’s” also have New England roots. Samuel Shaw had grown up in Boston and become an artillery officer during the Revolutionary War. He helped open the China Trade, first as supercargo on the Empress of China in 1784 and then as a trader and first American consul in Canton from 1786 to his death in 1794.

Thomas Randall’s background is harder to pin down, in part because there’s a prominent New York merchant of the same name. He was a lieutenant in the Continental artillery regiment as early as October 1775, when he was court-martialed for stabbing an enlisted man. (The panel recommended a reprimand.) In 1784 Shaw insisted that “Captain Randall, with whom he had formed an intimate friendship in the course of the American war, and who was as destitute of property and employment as himself, should be united with him and share with him the profits of the agency” in China.

That enterprise failed after Shaw’s death at the age of thirty-nine, and the notes Punqua hoped to collect on were worthless. No wonder he needed help to get back home.

TOMORROW: But what about his servant?

Trading with China

Last Sunday the Boston Globe ran an essay by Eric Jay Dolin based on his new book, When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail. It begins:

Two hundred twenty-eight years ago, a Boston-built ship inaugurated one of the longest and most fraught trading relationships in our country’s history. As the sun rose in the brilliant blue sky and gentle winds rippled the surface of water on Feb. 22, 1784, the Empress of China sailed down New York’s East River, embarking on a 15-month round-trip journey to Canton, modern day Guangzhou.

The voyage rewarded its backers with a 25 percent return on their money—not as much as they had hoped, but enough to prove the viability of the trade. Through the mid-1800s, a veritable armada of ships followed in the Empress of China’s wake, venturing from the young nation of the United States to the ancient empire of China, the mysterious so-called Middle Kingdom.

The merchants who funded those voyages, and their countrymen, saw China as a golden economic opportunity. China grew from roughly 300 million to 400 million people during this period; it was then, as now, the world’s most populous country. It was a rich source of tea, silk, and porcelain. Businessmen here dreamed that it would also become a major market for American goods, fueled by the purchasing power of Chinese consumers.

That is not what happened. Instead of becoming a major market for American goods, China racked up what would now be called a huge trade surplus with the United States. Americans purchased far more Chinese goods than the other way around. And by the end of the 19th century, that early dream of China as a leading booster of American commerce had long since been abandoned.

By then American merchants like Thomas Handysyd Perkins had discovered one product that could pay for their China ventures: opium from the Indian subcontinent. No matter that the Chinese government had ruled that drug illegal because of the social costs of addiction.

For most years of its first century, the U.S. of A. ran a trade deficit, importing more than it exported. Not until World War 1 did the country become a creditor nation. For most of the 20th century (i.e., the time we personally remember), the U.S. of A. had a strong trade surplus, in no small part because most other industrialized nations kept attacking each other. Taking that as the norm or ideal makes America’s current trade deficits seem like an anomaly. But perhaps the periods of trade surplus were the odd parts in American history.

Dettwiller on Capt. Magee at Shirley-Eustis House, 27 Sept.

On 27 September, the Shirley-Eustis House will host an illustrated talk by historical architect and researcher Frederic C. Detwiller on “Boston’s Convivial, Noble-Hearted Irishman Captain James Magee”:

Captain James Magee was described as “a convivial, noble-hearted Irishman” by his colleague and kinsman “Merchant Prince” Thomas Handasyd Perkins of Boston. The Magee family were seafarers from County Down, in the vicinity of Downpatrick (Saint Patrick’s country) across the Irish Sea from Scotland.

From somewhat obscure beginnings, James Magee [1750-1801] became an American privateer captain off the New England coast in the Revolution, and rose to prominence as a China trade captain and merchant. He survived the tragic wreck of the Brig General Arnold off Plymouth in 1778 to sail for China in 1786, taking with him the first U.S. Consul to China (Samuel Shaw) and bringing back the first Chinaman (a student) to the United States.

With his hard-earned wealth, James Magee and his wife Margaret Elliot, whom he married in 1783, were able to acquire Shirley Place, a mansion built by Royal Governor William Shirley in 1746-50 and now restored by the Shirley-Eustis House Association. Magee’s membership in the Charitable Irish Society and his numerous contributions of exotic items from his voyages (given to the Boston Marine Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, Harvard University, and the Peabody Museum in Salem) prove the generous nature of this “convivial, noble-hearted Irishman.”

Admission to this program is $5.00 for adults, $4.00 for students and seniors, and free to members of the Shirley-Eustis House Association. The lecture starts at 6:30 P.M., and will be followed by refreshments.

The thumbnail above shows a legal document created for Magee by Ezekiel Price in 1781; it’s readable at this page. Magee’s brig Amsterdam was captured by a British warship on 19 October while he was sailing back from Sweden “laded with Dry Good, Iron, Steel, Copper, Tea &c.” This document was his legal protest about being stopped on the high seas. Since Magee had previously used the same brig as a privateer to capture four British ships, he might not have really had the moral high ground.

Fichter to Speak on So Great a Proffit

Prof. James R. Fichter of Lingnan University in Hong Kong is speaking at three New England historic sites this month on his book So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism. Here’s a review in The New Republic.

Britain started trading with east Asia through the East India Company in the 1600s, and that economic and political link eventually led to major battles on the subcontinent in the Seven Years’ War and War of American Independence, and to the Boston Tea Party.

After independence, American merchants found themselves shut out of the British Empire’s trading system. (Some of them had apparently not thought through what “independence” would mean.) Among the risky new business ventures they tried was the China Trade.

Fichter’s first venue is the Salem Maritime National Historic Site’s visitor center on Sunday, 13 June, at 2:00 P.M., which makes sense since Salem was a center of America’s China Trade. Among the pioneering merchants was Elias Hasket Derby, who had marched with the Essex County militia on 19 Apr 1775, arguing the whole way with his colonel, Timothy Pickering, about whether they should march faster.

On Wednesday, 16 June, at 7:00 P.M., Fichter will speak at the Forbes House Museum in Milton, in an event co-sponsored by the Shirley-Eustis House Association. That Milton mansion was built by Robert Bennet Forbes, who started work for his opium-trading uncle Thomas Handysyd Perkins in 1816 at the age of twelve. The lecture is free, but seating is limited, so the organizers request an R.S.V.P. There will be refreshments supplied by Prof. Fichter’s publisher, Harvard University Press.

Finally, Fichter will cross state lines on Thursday, 17 June, at 5:00 P.M. and talk at the Rhode Island Historical Society’s John Brown House Museum at 52 Power Street in Providence. In 1787 Brown sent the General Washington to Canton with a cargo of “anchors, cannon shot, bar iron, sheet copper, ginseng…, tar, spermaceti candles,” and several types of alcohol, thus launching Rhode Island’s direct trade with east Asia.