Expanding Possibilities 395
During the prosperous years, the government impositions were
considered tolerable, and might even be seen as a service to win the
goodwill of the ofβicials. However, as said, the trading environment
deteriorated after the turn of the century. The non-business costs had
become a burden on the business community. In their straits-crossing
shipping the merchants used every means they could βind to bypass the
customs checkpoint in Amoy. They even built smaller junks to meet the
lower quota set for the government shipments.
Equally damaging was the banning of the shipment of Fujian teas
to Canton on merchant junks, following the request of the Liang-Guang
Governor-General in 1817, despite a strong appeal to lift the ban made
by the only surviving Ocean-Firm merchant Jiang Yuanheng. Such non-
conventional transportation by sea instead of the traditional overland
route had harmed the interests of the other merchants and inland
customs ofβicials in the interior. This move by the Amoy merchants, if
successful, would certainly have had negative consequences for the
Canton Hoppo. The whole incident casts illumination on the inβighting
between different provincial authorities who had great interests in
protecting the “clients” on their own turfs. Be that as it may, the ban
effectively killed the business initiative of shipping a valuable Fujian
product in the foreign trade from Amoy. The compiler of the Amoy
Gazetteer lamented that as a result of the ban, “the ocean junks [from
Amoy] trading to foreign countries carried only the coarse goods like
bowls and umbrellas”.^169
What the Amoy Gazetteer has recorded is a gloomy picture of Amoy’s
maritime trade. Government mismanagement had created a disruptive
and chaotic business environment in which the Amoy junk trade had to
struggle to stay aβloat.
To what extent had the business conditions in Amoy affected the
junk trade in general and the fortune of the maritime merchants in the
port city in particular? First and foremost, Charles Gutzlaff’s eyewitness
account mentioned earlier seems to give a contrasting picture of the
fortunes of the Amoy merchants. His journal entry written on 7 April
1832 says that, “a large amount of Chinese shipping belongs to Amoy
merchants, and that the greater part of capital employed in the coasting
trade is their Property”.^170 He happened to be present in Amoy about
eight months after the fateful typhoon that had sunk half of its merchant
βleet. From the overall context of this account, it would seem that the
- The comments in this paragraph are based on the information derived from
ibid., juan 5, pp. 185, 190‒1 and the quote from p. 181. - Charles Gutzlaff, Journal of Three Voyages, p. 193.