Canton and Connecticut

Exhibitions that feature China trade artifacts generally bring to mind the age of sailing; of wooden ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope laden with costly porcelains and silks; of dank and creaking holds, and of the shouts of sailors and cries of anxious gulls as the vessels weigh anchor. Young America did a fair amount of business with China; and her merchants and ship owners became wealthy in the process.
Many people assume that this trade, and the wealth and prosperity it generated, was confined to the coastal cities. The exhibit, The Canton Connection: Art and Commerce of the China Trade, 1784-1860, at Historic Deerfield’s Flynt Center, challenges this myth.
“Our intent is to explore the role of trade between China and rural New England, dispelling the myth that the China trade was exclusively an urban, coastal phenomenon,” commented Amanda Lange, Curator of Historic Interiors. “We’ve examined the stories of Connecticut River Valley merchants, sailors, captains, and wives involved in ventures to China through advertisements, diaries, letters, and many actual objects brought home.”

The Canton System
The show opens with an intriguing look at Canton from the traders’ points of view. Detailed maps and images of the hongs, or factories, of the western merchants are in abundance. There are views of the Pearl River, and of Macao, Hong Kong, and Whampoa. Two magnificent punch bowls decorated with scenes of the Canton waterfront are highlights in this section. They are framed by silk screened arches and partitions featuring similar views. The charming effect is at once segmental, light, and airy.
The Canton System was an elaborate maze of rules for traders coming to China. Its intent was to limit contact of the “barbarian” merchants with the general population of China. Ships were required to stop at the Portuguese colony of Macao at the entrance to the Pearl River to obtain their chop (permission), to discharge their female passengers, and to pick up their Chinese pilot to guide the ship to Whampoa, a deep-water anchorage about 70 miles away. From here, the captain and ship’s commercial agent traveled upriver another 12 miles to Canton, while crew refitted the ship and waited.
Foreigners in Canton were confined to a 12-acre section of waterfront. Each merchant lived and worked within his firm’s trading establishment. Ground floors contained counting rooms, storage, and packing spaces for tea, silks, and porcelains. Upper floors offered offices, dining rooms, and sleeping facilities. Each merchant was required to interact with members of the Co-Hong, a group of eight to 10 wealthy Chinese merchants. This small group sold the in-bound cargo, assessed duties on all cargo sold or purchased, and took responsibility for the foreign vessel while it was at anchor.America’s Outbound Cargo
Outbound cargo from America is the subject of keen interest in this show, which takes a detailed look at what the Chinese wanted in trade with our new nation. Selecting cargo to trade presented challenges in light of China’s policy of self-sufficiency. Canton merchants would always take silver coins, particularly Spanish pieces of eight, in exchange for the precious teas, silks, and porcelains America wanted. The Chinese also desired furs, which were standard cargo for American ships of this period. Sea otter, beaver, and seal pelts were prized for lining winter clothing. Other trade goods were ginseng, sandalwood, and (later) opium.
Opium was a commodity that became a solution for the imbalance of trade with China. Its importation was officially banned by 1796, but the drug created enormous wealth for those merchants who took the risk of bringing it to China. Sandalwood, a fragrant wood grown in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), was valued for the construction of chests, boxes, fans, and other items by the Chinese. The Chinese also valued quicksilver (mercury), copper, iron, and culinary delicacies such as sea slugs, birds’ nests, and shark fins.

Tea for the Americas
The star of this exhibition is a gouache and watercolor Tea Production Album produced in Canton circa 1790. Tea was by far the most important trade item exported to the west, and until the early nineteenth century, green tea was preferred in America. Early albums of this type, produced under Imperial patronage, illustrate the production of tea, or silk, or the cultivation of rice. Later, Cantonese painters created albums like this one for their Western customers.
An album such as this could give Westerners a working knowledge of how tea was produced and handled up to the time it reached Canton. Historic Deerfield’s album is accordion-style, with 24 pages that depict the cultivation of the tea plant, the process of harvesting and processing the leaves, and the packing and transportation of the leaves to market. Amanda Lange tells that complete albums of tea production are extremely rare survivals, as individual images were often separated from their binding for sale or framing.

Silks, Silver, Porcelain, and other Imports
Also on view are Chinese silver, enamel on copper, paktong (an alloy of nickel, copper, and zinc), and pewter. All of these were worked by Cantonese artisans and brought back by western traders. Porcelains on display are extensive and include 38 pieces from an Order of Cincinnati tea service that was a gift of Samuel Shaw to his friend David Townsend of Boston, dating to about 1790. The latter’s portrait accompanies the service, along with a letter from Shaw to Townsend, immortalizing this gift. Other porcelains include Nanking wares, some decorated in the Famille Verte and Famille Rose tradition, and a marvelous bottle decorated with a parrot and cherries that once belonged to a five-piece garniture set. Many of these ceramics have long been on view in Deerfield’s historic houses, but are hard to see nestled inside cupboards and breakfronts. It’s great to examine them front and center.
Silks woven in China are light in weight, very supple, and wider in width (28” to 32” wide) than those woven in Europe (usually 19” to 23”). Visitors can see a woman’s gown made of plain weave cream silk decorated with polychrome paints and silver, produced and decorated in China and assembled in England. A rare survivor is also on display, a Banyan, or man’s dressing gown, of vibrant yellow silk damask weave with an olive silk half-lining. These floor-length loose robes were worn by gentlemen in the privacy of their homes. Other objects on display are lacquer sewing boxes and novelties, such as fans, an ivory chess set, game counters, and a set of ivory jackstraws.

Rural New England and the China Trade
The last section of the show is its most innovative. It provides information about what the residents of New England could buy from China, and also what the Connecticut River Valley could send there. This section of the exhibition makes it clear that the China trade was not simply a coastal phenomenon.
Ginseng grew wild in the Connecticut woodlands, and its root, the most valuable part of the plant, played an important role in America’s early years of trade with China. It was valued by the Chinese as a remedy for soothing nerves, lengthening life, and prolonging virility. The Emperor had a monopoly on locally harvested ginseng, often creating a shortage, so Chinese merchants valued imports of the root. The Empress of China carried 30 tons of ginseng as part of its cargo on the first American voyage to China. Now rare, it once was abundant in New England, and the harvests were huge. In 1787, for example, Hartford merchant Jeremiah Wadsworth contracted with William Moore of Greenfield, Massachusetts for 800 pounds, and with Zebina Curtis of Windsor, Vermont for two tons.
As ginseng traveled down the Connecticut River, imports came upstream. More than 120 China trade goods originally owned by Connecticut River Valley residents are displayed in the exhibit. They include a set of Chinese export cups and saucers owned by John Russell (1771-1775) and Hannah Sheldon Russell (1738-1814) of Deerfield, and a polychrome enameled punch bowl owned by Charles Phelps Jr. (1744-1814) and Elizabeth Porter Phelps (1747-1817) of Hadley, Massachusetts.
“The Connecticut River formed a vital economic link for the towns along it,” said Ms. Lange, “but navigation of the river could be difficult.”
It lacked a large harbor at its mouth and the channel itself was shallow, averaging a depth of only five feet and six inches from Middletown to Hartford. Three months of the year, the river was blocked by ice. Sea-going vessels couldn’t travel any further than Hartford. Beyond that point, there were falls at Enfield, South Hadley, and Turner’s Falls. Cargo had to be taken off the flat-bottomed barges and hauled around each of the falls, only to be reloaded again or driven overland to towns like Northampton, Massachusetts. Canals circumventing these obstacles were not built until the early nineteenth century.
Connecticut River Valley Merchants
One of the best-known nineteenth-century merchants was Samuel Wadsworth Russell of Middletown, Connecticut, who made his fortune in the China Trade. Russell was a descendent of Jeremiah Wadsworth, who, as is noted above, contracted with country merchants from Massachusetts and Vermont for ginseng. In 1819, Samuel Russell arrived in Canton as a partner with a group of Providence, Rhode Island, merchants. By 1824, he formed a partnership with John Cushing and Philip Ammidon, establishing the commission house of Russell and Company. It specialized in providing services to other traders, such as marketing imports, investing the proceeds, securing freight, negotiating bills, and finding insurance. The firm continued in business for nearly a century, primarily selling opium in exchange for teas, silks, porcelains, camphor wood, carved ivory, and spices. Russell and Company also established business connections with Parsi opium growers, successfully breaking Britain’s monopoly of the drug trade.
In Amanda Lange’s opinion, “Russell’s greatest impact on Middletown, Connecticut, was the Russell House, built on the fortunes of the China trade.”
His wife, Frances, commissioned New Haven architect Ithiel Town to design the house. Dubbed “The China Palace” by irreverent neighbors, it was filled with teak furniture, lacquerware, Chinese porcelains, and several gifts from the Canton merchant, Houqua. An image of this fashionable Greek Revival house completed in 1830 is on view.
Another New England connection is the well-documented voyage of Caroline Hyde Butler, of Northampton, to China, with her husband Edward in October 1836. Thirty-two years old at the time, she kept a journal of her trip aboard the ship Roman, filling it with observations of shipboard life and the social customs of the Chinese. The restriction against foreign women in Canton meant that she stayed in Macao for the duration of her time in China. Her descendents still own several souvenirs of her voyage, a number of which are in the exhibition. A remarkably detailed miniature whatnot shelf of carved ivory is among the artifacts at the Flynt Center.

Amanda Lange, who curated the exhibition, is also the author of Chinese Export Art at Historic Deerfield, a full-color catalogue of Historic Deerfield’s China trade art collection. The volume includes more than 125 object entries in the areas of graphic arts, textiles, metals, novelties, and porcelains.
Be sure to see this exhibition, which runs through August 6, 2006, as well as the latest exhibition, which opened September 10, at Historic Deerfield’s Flynt Center: Embroidered History – Stitched Lives; Samplers and Needlework in The Historic Deerfield Collection 1670-1850. For information, call (413) 775-7201 or go to www.historic-deerfield.org.