Whampoa and the Canton Trade: Life and Death in a Chinese Port, 1700–1842

by Paul A. Van Dyke

Paul A. Van Dyke’s new book, Whampoa and the Canton Life and Death in a Chinese Port, 1700–1842, authoritatively corrects misconceptions about how the Qing government treated foreigners when it controlled all trade in the Guangzhou port. Van Dyke reappraises the role of Whampoa in the system―a port twenty kilometres away from Guangzhou―and reassesses the government’s attitude towards foreigners, which was much more accommodating than previous research suggested. In fact, Van Dyke shows that foreigners were not bound by local laws and were given freedom of movement around Whampoa and Canton to the extent that they were treated with leniency even when found in off-limit places. Whampoa and the Canton Trade recounts the lives of seamen who travelled half-way around the globe at great risk and lived through a historic period that would become the framework for subsequent encounters between China and the rest of the world. Were it not for the exchanges between the major powers and the Qing empire, the world―as we know it―would be a rather different place. Hence, Van Dyke’s command of data mining shows that Whampoa was a key pillar in the Canton System and, thus, in the making of the modern world economy.

328 pages, Hardcover

Published May 21, 2020

About the author

Paul Arthur Van Dyke is a retired Professor of History at University of Macau. He has published numerous articles on the history of maritime trade, and has been involved in several projects to advance the history of the Pearl River Delta including the translating and annotating of the Dutch Canton-Macao Dagregisters in English, and the compiling and writing of new histories on the Hong merchant families.

Reviews

[Elj · Rating 4 out of 5]

BA exams: I know a lot more about ships now than I ever imagined.. quite interesting actually, ngl