Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
be conducted only from October through January. British ships sailing
to Canton were required to submit to numerous inspections, measure-
ments, fees, and irregular tariffs. Venal Chinese functionaries hinted
broadly that generous “presents” or bribes would grease the gears of
commerce. Other expenses incurred involved the hiring of Chinese
go-betweens, ship pilots, and linguists who communicated with the
Westerners in a puerile language known as “pidgin” English, which
applied English vocabulary to Chinese word order (which fortunately
was largely the same as English). Items to be traded had to have been
cleared and contracted for a year in advance, and prices for the goods
were fixed by Chinese merchant guilds without open competition or
bidding, to the great frustration of British and other Western traders
who coveted maximum profit for their transactions. Western merchants
had “factories” (actually warehouses) where they could stay while they
traded, but they were not permitted to tarry in Canton for long and
were expected to leave the city soon after they had concluded their
business. They were not allowed to bring their wives to Canton, and
their mobility in the city was restricted to a few hundred yards around
their factories. They were also forbidden to communicate with Chinese
government officials, draw undue attention to themselves, or learn the
Chinese language. Qing law was another source of apprehension for
the British, who found it incomprehensible and were terrified of the
penalty (usually death by garroting) meted out for any number of legal
infractions.
The British found it difficult and frustrating to communicate with
the Chinese government about their grievances with the trading pro-
cedure. On the two notable occasions when the British did present
their grievances and requests directly to the Chinese government, dip-
lomatic tensions arose when the two peoples discovered that their
models and notions of diplomacy were vastly dissimilar. For the Brit-
ish, as well as all other Western nations, diplomacy was conducted
between equally sovereign and independent nation-states, each of
which stationed full-time residential diplomats in other nations'
capital cities to facilitate official government-to-government contacts.
This was not at all the way Qing China conducted foreign relations
with its neighbors. The Chinese considered their country the center
of world civilization, and all people were naturally drawn to China
because of its wealth, prestige, and power. Accordingly, foreign coun-
tries would dispatch envoys to China as humble tribute bearers who
meekly petitioned for an audience with the emperor. While in China,
the envoys would naturally perform the kowtow to the emperor. And
when their diplomatic functions were concluded, the foreign envoys
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