366 Boundaries and Beyond
In 1757 (22nd year of the Qianlong Emperor, r. 1736‒95), the Qing
Court designated Canton the only port of call for the vessels of British
East India Company as well as all other European ships. All transactions
with Europeans were required to go through the Thirteen Hong (Shisan
Hang, the 13 authorized dealers) in Canton. Therefore, whereas Amoy
was the designated port for the overseas junk trade, the Hong merchants
in Canton were assigned the task of dealing with the visiting European
traders. In fact, Chinese shipping and trade had progressed at such a
fast pace, their actual operations did not comply with the prescribed
policy guidelines. Canton was constantly involved in both the coastal and
overseas junk trades that were not ofβicially within its purview.
The main concern of the Governor-General and Hoppo in Canton
was to ensure the smooth operation of the trade system. As Paul A.
Van Dyke observes, they were assigning responsibilities for the control
of foreigners who traded to Canton downward to the actual operators,
including the Hong merchants, linguists, compradors and pilots. The so-
called Canton System, to cite Paul A. Van Dyke, “was like a huge machine,
with thousands of little parts that worked independently of, but in
concert with, each other to move trade forward”.^53 Unquestionably, in
the operation of the trading system, the Hong merchants were the most
indispensable contributors. They played the main role of mediating
between the authorities and foreign merchants.
Sustaining the Network Power, 1800‒ 43
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the native shipping enterprise
had become diversiβied with more junks being βitted out in other coastal
ports.^54 Nonetheless, Amoy remained an active maritime player in the
early decades of the nineteenth century. As Zhou Kai records in the Amoy
Gazetteer, by the early nineteenth century, junks departing from Amoy
continued to sail southward to Qiongzhou in Hainan Island, or northward
to Tianjin, Jinzhou and other places.^55 Recording what he saw during his
visit to Amoy in the early 1830s, the words of the German missionary
Charles Gutzlaff (1803‒51) were full of praise for the vitality and
- Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade, p. 165.
- Concerning the declining position of Amoy as a shipping center, see Chen
Kuo-tung 陳國棟, “Qingdai zhongye xiamen de haishang maoyi” 清代中葉廈
門的海上貿易 (1727‒1833) [The Maritime Trade of Amoy in the Mid-Qing
Era, 1727‒1833), in Chen Kuo-tung, Dongya haiyu yi qian nian 東亞海域一
千年 [A thousand years of the East Asian maritime world] (Taipei: Yuanliu
chubanshe, 2005), pp. 467‒505. - Zhou Kai, Xiamen zhi, Vol. 95, juan 4, pp. 140, 150.
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