398 Boundaries and Beyond
The deteriorating native shipping on the China coast provided an
opportunity for the British vessels to take over the lucrative carrying
trade from the Chinese. They had begun to lay their hands on the inter-
treaty-port shipping ever since the opening of the βive Treaty Ports. The
British were dissatisβied with a situation in which their carrying trade
between the China coast and the British Straits Settlements was merely
an auxiliary to the direct European and Indian trade.
In the βirst few decades of the nineteenth century, the British
ofβicials in Asia as well as the House of Commons continued to show an
interest in the prosperous carrying trade operated by the Chinese junks.
Rutherford Alcock had been particularly keen on the matter, as revealed
in his 1848 report to Governor Bonham in Hong Kong. John Bowring in
Canton was so excited about the potential of the British involvement
in the carrying trade that in 1852 he ordered the ofβicials in the βive
consular ports to investigate the state of the Chinese junk trade. In his
response, Rutherford Alcock repeated his earlier observations and
conβidently foresaw the substitution of advanced British vessels for the
Chinese junks of a “primitive character”. John Bowring was very pleased
with Alcock’s remarks and took the view that “the foreign civilization”
that was pressing upon the China coast would soon work to change the
shipping modes in this part of the world. He said, “[T]he time is probably
not distant when the whole of the foreign trade and a large portion of
the coasting trade now carried on by the junks, will be transferred to
ships of European or American construction.”^178
Although John Bowring’s euphoric vision that modern shipping would
soon transform the Chinese carrying trade might have been premature,
he and Alcock were right about the great challenge posed to traditional
Chinese shipping by western shipping since the opening of the Treaty
Ports. The predominant position of Amoy, Changlim and Canton in the
longer-haul coastal trade, for instance, was disrupted by western inter-
Treaty Port shipping. Nevertheless, modern shipping had never been
able to replace fully the low-cost labor-intensive junk trade, as in the
case of the Chinese coastal shipping that was still in great demand in
China’s traditional commercial sector.^179 Although the junk trade was
losing ground in the inter-treaty-port shipping, it did survive in the arena
beyond the Treaty Ports. The junks also continued to provide the crucial
- FO 228/136, no. 151, Bowring to the Earl of Malmesbury, pp. 7a, 8a.
- Rhoads Murphey points to the limited transformative power of modern
technology in bringing about innovations. See Rhoads Murphey, “The Treaty
Ports and China’s Modernization”, pp. 17‒71.
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