Expanding Possibilities 391
The Beginning of the End?
As this essay has shown, the decades up to the early 1840s represent
a time in which the Min-Yue junk trade was in its heyday. Commenting
on the state of Chinese junk trade in 1852, British consular ofβicials in
the Treaty Ports were still highly appreciative of the strength of the junk
trade in some parts of Southeast Asia. However, its rapid development
was not without its problems in the three major trading ports, namely
Canton, Amoy and Shanghai, even in the few decades before they were
made Treaty Ports in 1843, as the British consular ofβicials had already
detected.
In Canton, the weaknesses in the trading system were exposed when
the Bengang Hang ended its operations in 1801. As already mentioned,
this group had been assigned the task of supervising and managing the
local junks of the port. Its downfall was partly caused by the debts it
owed the Siamese and other foreigners, leading to its bankruptcy. The
supervision of this branch of the trade was transferred to the Hong
merchants until the abolition of the Hong system as stipulated in the
Treaty of Nanking.^160
After 1843, the worrying condition of the junk trade emerged even
more conspicuously. In what he wrote in 1852 Harry Parkes indicated
that the introduction of the treaty system had opened the way to changes
and subsequent decline in the junk trade in Canton. With the opening
of the northern ports, namely Amoy, Ningbo and Shanghai, the business
of the Canton junks was adversely affected. They could no longer collect
Straits produce from the markets at low prices as before on account of
the competition offered by western shipping. Neither could they dispose
of the goods at a proβit, except in the ports in the Gulf of Beizhili and the
Liaodong Peninsula in north China where western vessels had not yet
made their appearance. The proβits of the 20 junks that continued to sail
to Tianjin and its neighborhood were principally derived from opium and
the English piece-goods that they had introduced.^161
Aware of the superiority of the western vessels sailing under the βlags
of different European nations, the Chinese merchants chartered them to
convey Straits produce to the βive Treaty Ports. The transfer to western
vessels amounted to more than one-half of the whole trade. Consequently,
half of the 14 principal Hongs serving their Straits constituents and two
other Hongs conducting business with Manila ceased to employ the native
junks. The remaining βive Hongs and other smaller establishments were
- Harry Parkes in FO 228/136, no. 151, John Bowring to the Earl of Malmesbury,
Encl. 10, 53a‒54a. - Ibid., pp. 56a‒59b.