U.S. naval forces were not formal participants in the First Opium War, but
Washington was quick to take full advantage of Beijing’s discomfiture. On two
occasions over the next decade, the senior U.S. naval officer in East Asia—
Commander John Kelly in 1854, Commander Andrew Foote in 1856—led
combat operations against Chinese forts in their efforts to protect Americans
onshore. In both cases, Chinese observers and other eyewitnesses believed that
U.S. ships had acted in concert with British naval forces. Hence, from the very
beginning of the American naval presencein Asian waters, indigenous peoples
of the region viewed U.S. actions as identical to those of the other Western
imperial powers.
By the mid-1850s, American missionaries and diplomats had established
themselves in China, joined by a flow of businessmen seeking their fortune.
Even most U.S. ‘‘diplomats’’ of the age were more merchants than government
emissaries, consular agents usually focused on advancing trade privileges. Until
1856, in fact, these representatives received no salary, but were expected to earn
a living through private business or by collecting fees. In 1856, Congress began
providing salaries for consuls serving at certain posts, but even these officers were
permitted to continue collecting fees for services performed.^2
Best-known of the U.S. naval actions in nineteenth-century Asia was
Commodore Mathew Calbraith Perry’s ‘‘opening’’ of Japan. Perry’s effort to bring
about diplomatic and economic relations with Japan succeeded in part because of
American naval power, but perhaps even more so because of the dramatic changes
percolating within Japanese society and government, which would lead to that
country’s historic Meiji Restoration.
The pattern thus established—U.S. naval power, diplomats, businessmen,
missionaries—repeated itself throughout East Asia during the nineteenth cen-
tury.^3 It was a continuum that extended both horizontally, among the Americans
residing in China, and vertically, between these Americans and their counterparts
‘‘at home’’ in the United States. Most missionaries enjoyed the sponsorship of
specific churches or organizations that rarely hesitated to seek congressional sup-
port for their representatives in the field. Similarly, businesses and corporations
with agents in China frequently sought active support from Congress. This twin
paradigm of religious and commercial zeal was—and perhaps remains—in fact
close to the core of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century American character,
which was eventually codified under the rubric of Manifest Destiny.^4
The U.S. Navy was the leading military force in practically all efforts to estab-
lish and consolidate an American presence in East Asia in economic, cultural and
religious, or political areas of concern. The First Opium War was followed in
1858–60 by the Second Opium War, in which the U.S. naval commander in East
Asian waters, Commodore Josiah Tattnall, violated his orders, insinuating his
ships—and hence Washington—into the fray against the interests and forces of
China, a nominally independent state at peace with the United States.48 Asia Looks Seaward