[CTRL] [2] Philadelphia and the China Trade

[Kris Millegan]

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</A> -Cui Bono?-

an excerpt from:
Philadelphia and the China Trade 1682-1846
Jonathan Goldstein
The Pennsylvania State University�1978
All Rights Reserved
The Pennsylvania State University Press
121 pps.  First Edition � Out-of-print
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A little background.
om
k
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2
The Colonial Impetus 1682-1783

By introducing the produce of those countries which lie on the east side of
the old world, and particularly those of China, this country may be improved
beyond what heretofore might have been expected. And could we be so fortunate
as to introduce the industry of the Chinese, their arts of living and
improvements in husbandry, as well as their native plants, America might in
time become as populous as China.
-Charles Thomson[1]

In the Colonial period, Philadelphia merchants acquired mercantile and
navigational expertise that would later be useful to them in a direct China
trade of their own. They assumed an intellectual predisposition favorable to
direct trade with China, and became increasingly disenchanted with British
mercantilist regulation of the indirect type of trade which they were obliged
to conduct. Both attitudinal processes occurred gradually. Their origins may
be traced as far back as the founding of the Province of Pennsylvania and
City of Philadelphia in 1682. The processes reached their culmination and
received their fullest expression in 1783, when American independence was
recognized by the British and when Philadelphia merchants undertook the
establishment of a direct China trade of their own.

A Business Community Is Formed

Prior to 1783, and to a considerable extent thereafter until at least 1846,
America's international trade was conducted in the colonial fashion wherein
each municipality was a discrete entity. The American business historian
Thomas Cochran has noted in this respect:

In spite of intercolonial trade in some items, each major port with its
tributary back country was a separate business community remote from its
neighbors. The personal ties that bound the business world together were more
often between American merchants and the houses of Liverpool or London than
between men on this side of the Atlantic. Business men of Charleston were
more at home in London than in Boston.[2]

The economic development of Philadelphia and the growth of its merchant
community were no exception. The city was founded in 1682 by English Quakers
led by William Penn. A cohesive and well-capitalized merchant community
developed with strong ties to the agricultural producers of the city's
hinterland and to agents abroad. Ties between Philadelphia Quaker merchants
and their kin abroad were a constant feature of the city's colonial and early
national economic development, and facilitated the early development of a
lucrative export trade in flour and lumber from the province to Europe,
Canada, and the West Indies. Furthermore, the well-known Quaker policy of
toleration, liberal by seventeenth-century standards, helped to populate the
colony and gave it a cultural, ethnic, and mercantile vitality not seen again
in America until the migrations of the nineteenth century. German farmers of
numerous persecuted sects settled the city's hinterland. Jewish businessmen
brought to the city of Philadelphia a network of foreign trade connections
second only to that of the Quakers. By 1785, Philadelphia was not only the
most populous but probably the most cosmopolitan city in the United States,
with a significantly large and intellectual French emigre community, and an
ethnic diversity that embraced Chinese and East Indians as well as the
inhabitants of European ancestry, not to mention blacks.[3]

The economic growth of the city was fostered, in its broader aspects, by its
fortune in being almost completely surrounded by grain-producing lands that
an industrious populace was quick to exploit. The commercial development of
the port proceeded in stages that had been the pattern for the development of
English capitalism during two centuries: a progression from farming to the
export of commodities, to the ownership of vessels, to the ultimate
translation of profits into domestic manufacture and internal improvements.
The experience of three Philadelphia mercantile families prominent in the
China trade may be cited as examples of stages of this process.

The Waln family, members of George Fox's original Quaker meeting in England,
joined Penn in the founding of Philadelphia in 1682. By 1772, the Walns had
built their own flour mill in WaInford, Monmouth County, New Jersey. The
Donnaldsons, a non-Quaker family, were, in pre-Revolutionary times, farmers,
grain merchants, and manufacturers of ship bread in Montgomery County,
Pennsylvania. The non-Quaker Latimer family, whose Philadelphia town house
has been noted, originally emigrated from Newry, Ireland, to Pennsylvania in
1736 to become farmers near Lancaster. By midcentury, James Latimer had moved
southeast to the rich grainproducing lands along Delaware's Christina River.
Instead of continuing as a farmer, he purchased several flour mills and a
private wharf, and was shipping both grain and flour to Philadelphia. By
1775, James was listed as one of four owners of a 170-ton
Philadelphia-built-and-based merchant ship, the Liberty. By the time of the
Revolution, all three families had expanded from purely agricultural pursuits
and were using their own vessels to transport other people's grain out of the
port of Philadelphia and abroad. James Latimer's grandson John, like Waln and
Donnaldson kin, ultimately would expand the family's interests into East
Asian trade.[4]

The experience of the three families indicates the importance of the regional
commercial metropolis�Philadelphia�for people who basically resided on the
periphery of the economic region, but who wished to expand from agriculture
to shipping, brokerage, and large-scale finance and investment. The
commercial rise of these three families, and particularly their ability to
expand, diversify, and prosper within one economic region, reflected the
nature of America's foreign trade up to the first half of the eighteenth
century. While families did rise from farming to shipping thereafter, by the
mid-eighteenth century it was also possible for newly arrived immigrants to
build up fortunes exclusively through the gradual development of a
merchandising and overseas shipping business. Thus, without dirtying their
hands in agriculture, Robert Morris and Thomas Willing, both immigrants,
built up one of the colony's most successful and best known mercantile
houses. In similar fashion the Gratzes, Marxes, Levys, Ettings, and Stephen
Girard all prospered.

In broadest terms, both the import and export sectors of Philadelphia's
Colonial commerce demonstrated steady growth, particularly after the
conclusion of the war with Spain and France in 1748, rising to peaks in
1760-62 and 1772-73.[5] Philadelphia merchants became the major, but hardly
the exclusive, import and export agents for a region that remained fairly
constant geographically, although settlement patterns within the region do
gradually shift southwestward and westward of the metropolis. The map of the
Philadelphia economic region in colonial times (see illustration) also
depicts Philadelphia's commercial hinterland as late as 1846, although the
growth of the port of Baltimore severed the Susquehanna basin from
Philadelphia's economic sphere of influence as early as the 1780s. As far as
Oriental trade is concerned, the region came to include Wilmington, which,
although a port of entry, did not develop a China trade of its own.[6]

Philadelphia merchants gained, through their foreign trade, a familiarity
with techniques of international business that would later be useful to them
in the China trade: managing fleets; selling both wholesale and retail; and
auctioneering. They stocked a few basic lines of "staple" commodities, as
well as general merchandise. They maintained a constant stream of remittances
both locally and abroad over long periods of time. They scrupulously studied
foreign price levels, which were considered the best barometer of overseas
trade conditions. They became accustomed to being paid in Europe and the West
Indies in specie and bills of exchange, which were subsequently traded for
commodities for the home port. They developed a shrewdness in evaluating
people over great distances and in recruiting dependable captains and agents.

Intellectual Attitudes Conducive to the China Trade

Within a basic commercial context, two not altogether unrelated intellectual
attitudes emerged in Colonial Philadelphia that would, each in its own way,
foster the development of an American China trade. The first was the
deliberate promotion by Philadelphia intellectuals of useful and practical
solutions to immediate problems. Aspects of commerce with China could be
rationalized in such terms. The second was a lighthearted fascination with
the art objects and products of China, which offered a pleasant alternative
to dominant classical modes, and which in turn had economic implications for
import merchants.

The eighteenth-century intellectuals of Philadelphia were men of the
Enlightenment. "Useful knowledge" was the term used by Franklin and
Jefferson, both long-term Presidents of Philadelphia's American Philosophical
Society, to characterize the object of their scholarly research. They were
not concerned with metaphysics, which sought truth for its own sake. Truth
was a quality revealed only when a doctrine or theory could be shown to have
practical usefulness. In 1768, Charles Thomson advised the American Society
Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, a predecessor society of
the APS:

Knowledge is of little use when confined to mere speculation; But when
speculative truths are reduced to practice, when theories, grounded upon
experiments, are applied to common purposes of life, and when, by these,
agriculture is improved, trade enlarged, and the arts of living made more
easy and comfortable, and, of course, the increase and happiness of mankind
promoted, knowledge then becomes really useful.[7]

William Smith, a member of Thomson's circle who became the innovative Provost
of the University of Pennsylvania, asserted that:

the man who will discover a method of preventing the fly from destroying
turnips or who will point out a new and profitable article of agriculture and
commerce will deserve more from his fellow citizens and from heaven than all
the Latin and Greek scholars or all the teachers of technical learning that
ever existed in any age or country.[8]

The desire of both of these men for the contrived expansion of trade and
commerce found expression in the promotional activities of the APS and its
predecessor societies. As early as 1768 and up through the middle of the
nineteenth century, these Philadelphia organizations were involved in
advancement of practical research related to China. In 1771, the first volume
of the APS Transactions contained the following preface by Charles Thomson:

By introducing the produce of those countries which lie on the east side of
the old world, and particularly those of China, this country may be improved
beyond what heretofore might have been expected. And could we be so fortunate
as to introduce the industry of the Chinese, their arts of living and
improvements in husbandry, as well as their native plants, America might in
time become as populous as China.[9]

In particular, Thomson felt that the development of American cotton, silk,
tea, and porcelain industries could be fostered through the importation of
Chinese specimens and techniques. He cited the similarity in latitude and
climate of Philadelphia and Peking, the similarities in vegetation, and the
already successful integration of three Chinese plants-rice, whisk, and the
Chinese vetch�into American agriculture. Noting the "great variety" of
Pennsylvania clays, Thomson postulated that "a porcelain equal to that
brought from China may be made here." In part because of the interest in
China initiated by Thomson in the Colonial period, the APS, in post-
Revolutionary America, actively promoted the introduction of techniques of
Chinese sericulture, animal husbandry, and agriculture.[10]

Another contribution of the APS toward the development of Sino-American
relations was the publication of ethnographic research which tended to
downplay the ethnic and cultural gap between the two cultures. In particular,
the society in 1779 published Benjamin Rush's arguments on the "common
origin" of all races. Rush wrote:

We shall render the belief of the whole human race being descended from one
pair, easy, and universal, and thereby not only add weight to the Christian
revelation, but remove an obstacle to the exercise of the universal
benevolence which is inculcated by it.[11]

After about 1810, the ethnographic notions of Rush came under attack in
Philadelphia from proponents of theories of diverse and inherently unequal
origins of the races, which will be discussed later. However, prior to the
emergence of this "American School" of ethnology in about 1815, the physical
characteristics of the Chinese seem to have posed no major obstacle to
Sino-American relations. The APS played a part in the propagation of such
positive attitudes.[12]

In addition to the utilitarian notions advanced by the APS, romantic idealism
also played its part in the origin of colonial commerce with China. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many Americans and Europeans
entertained a fascination with the exotic. This emotion was at least partly
rooted in dissatisfaction with dominant classical modes. In political and
economic thought, such discontent had been expressed in the novel pragmatism
of the Enlightenment. In art and in social behavior, one means of relieving
the monotony of classicism was the introduction of refreshingly outlandish
Chinese goods and customs. Early in the eighteenth century, the upper classes
of Europe and America adopted the Chinese custom of tea drinking, together
with its porcelain equipage and an elaborate set of social rites of clearly
Western origin. This chic pastime was gradually adopted by the lower classes
as well, leading one Philadelphia merchant to observe by the early nineteenth
century that tea drinking in America had become "more incorporated with the
necessaries than the luxuries of life." Other Americans enlivened classic
motifs in their homes with the introduction of Chinese wallpaper, artifacts,
and designs, such as those in Mayor Samuel Powel's house in Philadelphia
(1765), or in Jefferson's designs for a Chinese pavilion at Monticello
(1770). The popularity of exoticity, while satisfying the desire of Americans
for the bizarre, had an economic effect as well, for it created a market for
imported Chinese goods.[13]

The Colonial Tea Trade

The merchants of British North America were not permitted, under the terms of
the 1651 Navigation Act and subsequent legislation, to sail in their own
ships to the Orient. Rather, they were obliged to purchase Chinese goods on
the London market, where the goods were deposited by the British East India
Company. Such a system was intended to guarantee the British a continuous
inflow of wealth from the colonies. It required from the Colonial merchant
the payment of middleman profits which he would not have to pay had he sailed
directly to China. From about 1750 on, the merchants of Colonial Philadelphia
seem to have had the mercantile and navigational expertise, and the necessary
capital, to embark on such direct voyages themselves, but were restrained by
the bans of British mercantilist legislation.

The acquisition of mercantile skills necessary for marketing and purchasing
Chinese goods came in response to Colonial demand for Chinese goods. As early
as 1721, tea had come into general use in New England. By 1781, a traveler
noted that most Americans drank the beverage at least twice a day. The
Colonial Philadelphia merchant Samuel Wharton shipped teas across
Pennsylvania to the Mohawk, Conojohare, and Delaware Indians, as well as to
frontiersmen living in the Appalachians from New York to North Carolina. He
wrote that it cost less than one cent/pound/mile to ship tea across
Pennsylvania.[14]

British customs records kept between 1750 and 1774 attest to the large volume
of tea consumed by Americans. England exported to Pennsylvania about 40,000
pounds per year, one-fifth of the average amount shipped from London to all
of continental North America. Philadelphia merchants thus acquired expertise
in judging and marketing the many grades of American tea long, before they
actually dealt directly with Chinese merchants.[15]

Colonial resistance to British taxation of tea has generally been associated
with Boston patriots, but many Philadelphians put up an equally stiff
opposition. They also favored less radical measures, such as compromise with,
or modification of, existing British regulation.

Smuggling was the major manifestation of Philadelphia opposition to British
control of the tea trade. Philadelphia merchants had developed a lucrative
tea-smuggling strategy by the mid-eighteenth century. Figures are
unfortunately unavailable on this clandestine commerce, but the patterns of
trade and some of the techniques used were noted in mercantile
correspondence. The Dutch West India Island of St. Eustacia seems to have
been the purchase point for the contraband, which was then spirited into
Philadelphia either by sea or overland across New Jersey. Sometimes local
customs officials connived in the operation. The Dutch, being free traders,
would sell to anyone willing to pay, with no questions asked.[16]

The main Philadelphia merchants who engaged in smuggling were Thomas Willing,
Robert Morris, Thomas Riche, and Thomas Wharton. These men displayed in their
smuggling activities as much innovation and craft as any other enterprising
colonials. Willing and Wharton used old or forged excise documents to get
their shipments past customs. The sender of the illegal goods marked the
cases and invoiced the shipment in accord with the false papers. Customs
officers were also bribed, prompting Richard Waln to comment that "our
smugglers find it safest to employ those who are appointed to prevent the
trade." The high point in the smuggling trade was reached in the mid-fifties.
By 1757, the Philadelphia merchant John Kidd observed that "not more than 16
chests of tea legally imported from England have been consumed in
Pennsylvania in two previous years, although total yearly consumption must
have been ca. 200 chests ."[17]

The British were hardly pleased with the clandestine traffic. Although they
were ultimately powerless to end the collusion of their constabulary in
America, they did make some attempts to halt it. New Jersey's vital role in
the transshipment of smuggled goods was terminated by Governor Robert Hunter
Morris, who conducted a vigorous campaign against this trade in 1756 and
succeeded in bringing this branch of the contraband trade to a virtual halt.
The Island of St. Eustacia was sacked by British troops in 1780 largely
because of its notorious role in the smuggling trade to America.[18]

Although some Philadelphia merchants continued to devise new ways to smuggle
tea even after Governor Morris' crackdown, others cooperated with British
mercantilist regulation and even devised ways to make the system work more
smoothly. Abel James, Henry Drinker, John Reynell, and Daniel Roberdeau were
several of the merchants in the city who abstained from the smuggling trade.
Roberdeau, who traded with the West Indies, where the temptation to engage in
smuggling was greatest, wrote a firm in Curacao that he was willing to serve
them only "within limit of the laws of trade." One author has asserted that
these merchants abstained because, as strict Quakers, they were particularly
scrupulous about obeying all regulations.[19] While religious faith may have
played some part in these merchants' abstinence, it would also seem possible
that their opposition might have been economically motivated. They may have
feared boycott by colleagues in America or in England if they engaged in
illegal activity. Furthermore, they may have simply felt that flying in the
face of the system wasn't worth the risk of official retaliation. The British
mercantilist system, with all its limitations, had been the source of their
past profit and could reasonably be expected to facilitate profits in the
future.

Among Colonial Philadelphia merchants, Samuel Wharton was distinguished both
by his abiding faith in the British mercantilist system and, at the same
time, by his desire to change and improve it through existing channels. He
apparently hoped that taxation upon tea would be repealed through
parliamentary means. In February 1770, after a brief period of lobbying in
London for parliamentary repeal, Wharton expressed the hope that "some of the
Inns may have wisdom enough to join in the repeal of the objectionable
Acts."[20] Wharton was, furthermore, astute enough to realize that mere
repeal of taxation would not be incentive enough to make merchants forsake
smuggling: tea had to be brought into the Colonies at a cost cheaper than via
St. Eustacia. He wrote:

A repeal of the 3d. tax would not enable the American merchants to lodge
money in London for the purpose of buying teas, and would not prevent them
from purchasing teas at those foreign places where they can exchange flour
corn & c. for them.[21]

To remedy this problem and return the tea trade to the British East India
Company, Wharton suggested that a mercantilist technique be employed. The
mother country should restructure the shipping regulations to America so that
tea could be brought in more cheaply. He advised, first, the direct
transshipment of the East India Company's teas from London to American
consignees, without those teas taking on the additional cost of storage and
auction sale on the London market. Second, he suggested that those teas be
consigned in London "upon a credit of 9 or 12 months."[22] The provision for
the extension of credit might solve the problem of merchants' having to "lay
down the dollar" for London teas. Instead, they could sell their grain and
flour in London on the fixed auction dates, and then pay the East India
Company whatever charges had accumulated on their tea accounts over the
preceding nine to twelve months. This was, essentially, the same system
employed in Holland by the Dutch East India Company.

The one factor which Wharton underestimated was the depth of emotion among
some Philadelphians against any revised British tea schemes, even if they
could be as lucrative to Americans as the smuggling trade. When the British
Board of Trade agreed to experimentation with the Wharton scheme in limited
fashion in 1773, public protests were held. Wharton persevered, securing as
Philadelphia consignees his own brothers, plus the loyal merchants James and
Drinker and Jonathan Brown. Patriots opposed the landing of tea because the
particularly hated tax on tea was still to be collected. In 1773, when the
first tea ship was due in Philadelphia under the new scheme, the consignees
were obliged to resign their commissions after receiving threats, public
protests, and visits by committees. When the ship appeared in port, it was
unable to unload its cargo and returned to England. Wharton's tea scheme,
frustrated by the wrath of his own countrymen rather than by any British
chicanery, was not repeated. The sentiment which had emerged on this issue
found its fullest expression a very short time thereafter in the outbreak of
the Revolutionary War.[23]

Thus yet another British mercantilist technique had proven to be unworkable,
and in effect British power in America had suffered another setback over the
issue of tea-in spite of the effort of loyal merchants to strengthen, not
weaken, that power. Unlike some of their colleagues, the loyal merchants had
sought their wealth under terms sanctioned by the crown. Some merchants, like
Wharton, saw their own wealth and the wealth of the crown as one and
inseparable, in the classic mercantilist sense.

The tea trade was not the only Colonial commerce in Chinese goods in which
merchants experienced frustration with British mercantilist control. They
also had difficulties in their commerce in trades which were of lesser volume.

The Colonial Porcelain Trade

The extent of the colonial importation of Chinese porcelain is difficult to
gauge. Porcelain was one of the major items smuggled in from St. Eustacia and
elsewhere. But even in smuggler's correspondence, porcelain is referred to as
"China," with no distinction between genuine Chinese porcelain and imitation
wares produced in Europe at Delft, Bow, and Worcester. Franklin referred to
the first appearance of "China" in his house in about 1730, but it is unclear
from his reference whether he meant genuine porcelain from China or
imitation.[24] In a 1758 letter, he specified that he was sending his wife
some Chinaware made at Bow and Worcester as well as "one old true China basin
... to show the difference in workmanship."[25] The diverse assortment of
porcelain shards excavated in Franklin's trash pit in Philadelphia further
attests to the wide variety of porcelain types in the province in Colonial
times, including many crudely or simply decorated pieces of Chinese porcelain
which were the weekday dishes for many Philadelphians (see illustration).
Such cheap varieties may have been imported for their value as salable
ballast. The picture is further complicated when it is realized that Colonial
Philadelphia was producing porcelain of its own. Indeed, the Colonial
porcelain trade underwent on a small scale the process of transition from
importation to domestic manufacture that would occur on a larger scale in the
post-Revolutionary China trade. Kaolin had been located along the bed of
White Clay Creek, south of Philadelphia. A factory was opened in Southwark,
Philadelphia, which has recently been excavated. The factory managed to
produce a number of first-rate porcelain wares, the first in America, before
it succumbed to bankruptcy in 1771. Thus although there are no reliable
statistics on the Colonial porcelain trade, the evidence of material culture
attests to the existence of a multitude of porcelain types in Colonial
Philadelphia, with genuine Chinese porcelain in competition with many other
types.[26]

The Colonial Ginseng Trade

In addition to importing Chinese goods, Philadelphia merchants were engaged
in exporting to China at least one locally produced commodity. Appalachian
ginseng root was used by the Chinese as a cure-all and aphrodisiac. The
octopus-shaped root, with a main stem resembling ginger or parsnip, grew wild
in Manchuria and Korea. In North America it was found in the Appalachians
from Quebec to Georgia, and along the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio
rivers. Until recent times ginseng did not respond to artificial cultivation.

The Chinese used five types of ginseng. The highly potent and desired
variety, aralia quinquefolia, was abundant in North America.

This variety was considered particularly efficacious on the spleen, and
reportedly was selling in China as late as 1911 for 250 times its weight in
silver.[27]

It is unclear when settlers in North America recognized their ginseng as the
same product so highly prized by the Chinese. One historian has claimed that
the Dutch shipped the root down the Hudson, thence to Amsterdam, and finally
to London, where it was sold to the East India Company at a 500-percent
profit. This would have had to occur before the Dutch departure from Fort
Orange in 1664. The veracity of the claim cannot be tested because the author
did not cite his source of information.[28]

There is evidence that the Jesuits, harbingers of so much Sino-Western
contact, noted early in the eighteenth century that "ginseng de Tartarie" was
growing in North America. A Jesuit named Jartoux, while engaged in mapping
Manchuria for the Chinese in 1709, made a drawing of Manchurian ginseng that
was subsequently published in Paris (see illustration). Another Jesuit,
Joseph Lafitau, published a memoir in Paris in 1718 which asserted that he
had found that same type of ginseng growing wild in Canada. Sometime shortly
after these discoveries, France opened up a lucrative trade in American
ginseng to China.[29]

In 1738, the Pennsylvania Gazette announced its "pleasure to acquaint the
world, that the famous Chinese plant ginseng is now discovered in the
province, near Susquehanna."[30]By 1752, a modest trade in the drug seems to
have developed between Philadelphia and London. The Philadelphia merchant
James Pemberton wrote of the "great noise about the price of ginseng in
London, by which some few who have shipped small parcels in the summer have
obtained a very advantageous price." He expressed the hope that if the prices
remained high "it will be a very profitable & beneficent thing to this part
of the world.[31] It is unclear just how much ginseng was shipped from
Philadelphia, as available statistics lump together ginseng shipped from all
of British North America. In 1770, some 74,000 pounds of American ginseng
reached London. By 1772, the drug disappeared entirely from the list of
exports to England, only to reemerge in 1783 in the single shipment of
several barrels of ginseng to England by one Philadelphia merchant. The drug
does not appear to have sustained the steady and lucrative remittances that
the Pembertons hoped for.[32]

Disenchantment with British Mercantilism

Even in the limited fashion in which Colonial Philadelphia merchants had
engaged in Oriental commerce, the experience had not been an altogether
successful one. In the Colonial tea trade, perhaps more than any other single
line of Asiatic commerce, merchants demonstrated their dissatisfaction with
British regulation by violent opposition to the landing of East India Company
teas and by smuggling, which was also employed in the importation of
porcelain. The hopes of the Pembertons for a large colonial ginseng trade did
not materialize, nor did the hopes of Samuel Wharton for improved tea trading.

One final episode illustrated some of the difficulties between colony and
mother country over the issue of Asian commerce. In 1751, 1753, and 1754,
Franklin, the province's leading intellectual, and William Allen, perhaps its
wealthiest merchant, sent a ship of their own in search of a Northwest
Passage to China. The venture of the Argo, Captain Swain, immediately
produced conflicts with London authorities, who questioned the propriety of
the Colonial venture. Had such a route been opened by the Colonials, and
commerce initiated, it would have been in violation of practically every
Navigation Act. Furthermore, Allen held definite intentions in terms of
striking "a lucrative trade on the coast of Labrador," in case the search for
the Passage proved fruitless. A London-based "Northwest Company" had already
applied to the Board of Trade for a monopoly of the Labrador trade, which, if
granted, would have made the Colonial venture futile. There were also
jurisdictional quarrels with the Hudson's Bay Company, whose charter had
already been granted. The disputes were only laid to rest when the Argo
returned to Philadelphia in 1754, at the end of its third and final attempt,
having neither located a Northwest Passage to China nor established a
Labrador trade. It would be another thirty years before Philadelphia
merchants would again seriously entertain the prospect of direct trade with
China.[33]

pps 11-23

Chapter 2

1. Charles Thomson, entry, January 1, 1768, First Minute Book, American
Society, APSL; Charles Thomson, "Preface," TAPS I (January 1769-January
1771), vii.

2. Thomas C. Cochran, Basic History of American Business, 2d ed. (Princeton:
Van Nostrand, 1968), p. 28.

3. Thomas La Fargue, "Some Early Chinese Visitors to the United States," Tien
Hsia Monthly I I (October- November 1940), 129.

4. "Registers Granted at the Port of Philadelphia in the Quarter ending 5th
January 1775," PMHB 39, no. 2 (1915), 93; On the Latimers, see James Scharf, H
istory of Delaware 1609-1888, 11 (Philadelphia: L. J. Richards 1888), p. 735;
John Campbell, History of the Society of the Friendly Sons qf'Saint Patrick (P
hiladelphia: Hibernian Society, 1892), pp. 119-20; Biographical and
Genealogical History of the State of Delaware, 11 (Chambersburg, Pa.: J. M.
Runk, 1899), p. 140; Samuel Small, Genealogical Records of George Small (Phila
delphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1905), pp. 142-43, 161-68. On the Walns and
Donnaldsons, see Richard Waln, Jr., WaInford Mill Accounts, 1772, HSP;
Letters of John, Richard, and Edward Donnaldson, 1700-1850, passim, Montgomery
 County Historical Society, Norristown, Pa.; (Stephen Winslow), Biographies
of Successful Philadelphia Merchants (Philadelphia: James K. Simon, 1864),
pp. 129-32.

5. Robert East, Business Enterprise in the American Revolutionary Era (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1938), pp. 126-48; Klopfer, "Statistics," p.
208.

6. James Livingood, The Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade Rivalry (Harrisburg:
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947), p. iii; Sara Farris,
"Wilmington's Maritime Commerce, 1775-1807," Delaware History 14, no. I
(April 1970), 22-51.

7. Pennsylvania Chronicle, March 7, 1768.

8. William Smith, "A Short Account of the Present State of the College," Unive
rsal Asylum and Columbian Magazine 5 (1790), 275.

9. Charles Thomson, entry, January 1, 1768, First Minute Book; Thomson,
"Preface," vii.

10. Thomson, "Preface," iii-xviii. "Whisk" may be a reference to "broom-corn
millet," a plant that was native to the East Indies. Its panicles were used
for making brooms and brushes. It is also referred to as sorghum vulgare and p
anicum miliaceum. L. H. Bailey and Ethel Bailey, Hortus (New York: Macmillan,
1935), p. 441; The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971),
vol. 1, p. 283; vol. 2, p. 3762. Letters, Peter Duponccau to John Bailey,
April 16, 22, 1830, Washburn Papers, MHS; Edwin Conklin, "The American
Philosophical Society and the Founders of Our Government," PH 4, no. 4
(1937), 238.

11. Benjamin Rush, "Observation [on] the Black Color of the Negroes," TAPS 4
(1779), 289-97.

12. William Stanton, The Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in
America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. viii; Winthrop
Jordan, White Over Black (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 242, 305-6.

13. Robert WaIn, Jr., "Miscellanies Vol. 5," 1820, WaIn Family Papers,
Library Company of Philadelphia; Rodris Roth, Tea Drinking in 18th-Century
America (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1961), p. 63; B. Sprague Allen,
Tides in English Taste (1619-1800), 1 (New York: Pageant Books, 1958), p.
234. See also Hugh Honour, Chinoiserie: The Vision of Cathay (London: John
Murray, 1961), p. 203.

14. Claude Robin, Nouveau Voyage dans I'Amirique 1781 (Philadelphia: Moutard,
1782), p. 19; Samuel Wharton, "Observations on Consumption of Teas in North
America," written in London, January 19, 1773, in PMHB 25, no. 1 (1901),
139-41; Gideon Nye, "American Commerce with China," The Far East (Shanghai),
n.s., 4 (January 1878), 16.

15. Benjamin Labaree, The Boston Tea Party (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1964), p. 331. Labaree's figures were taken from customs 3/50/74,
British Public Record Office. Corroborating statistics, taken from an
abstract prepared in the Office of the Inspector of Imports and Exports,
appear in Edward Charming, A History of the United States, III (New York:
Macmillan, 1916), p. 128. Labaree offers a comprehensive account of the
entire tea trade in Colonial America.

16. Letters: John Waddell to Sayre and Wharton, May 6, 27; June 7, 28;
September 20, 1756, Wharton Correspondence, 1679-1759, HSP; Thomas Wharton to
Robert Moulder, July 2, 1756; to John Waddell, July 3 and 7, August 5, 20,
and 26, 1756�Wharton Letterbook, 1752-59, HSP; Thomas Riche to Jacob van
Zand, August 13, 1755-Riche Letterbooks, 1750-71, HSP; John Kidd to Rawlinson
and Davidson, September 21, 1756�Kidd Letterbooks, 1749-63, HSP. Arthur
Jensen, "The Maritime Commerce of Colonial Philadelphia," unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1954, p. 280.

17. Letters: Richard WaIn to William Hales, September 14, 1771�WaIn
Letterbook, 1766-99, HSP; Willing and Morris to Mayne, Burn, and Mayne, May
6, 1756�Willing Letterbooks, 1754-61, HSP; Kidd to Rawlinson and Davidson,
January 28, 1757.

18. Jensen, "Commerce," p. 280; Thomas Taylor, "Philadelphia's Counterpart of
the Boston Tea Party," Bulletin of the Friends' Historical Society Of
Philadelphia 2 (November 1908), 88-99; Sidney Fisher, True History of the
Revolution (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1902), p. 407.

19. Letter: Daniel Roberdeau to Cruger and Gouverneur, November 13, 1764,
Roberdeau Letterbook, 1764-71, HSP; Jensen, "Commerce," p. 295.

20. Letter: Samuel Wharton to George Read, February 19, 1770, Dreer
Collection, n.s., HSP. Wharton was apparently referring not only to the tea
tax, but to other Parliamentary legislation as well.

21. Samuel Wharton, "Observations," pp. 139-41.

22. Samuel Wharton, "Observations," pp. 139-41.

23. Pennsylvania Packet, January 3, 1774; anonymous note to Abel James and
Henry Drinker, Fall 1773, in PMHB 15 (1891), 389-90; Jensen, "Commerce," p.
398; Frank Leach, "The Philadelphia of Our Ancestors. Old Philadelphia
Families. Wharton," North American, July 7, 1907.

24. Letters: Thomas Riche to George Clifford, September 18, 1762; to Q.
Hodshon, October 7, 1762�Riche Letterbooks, 1750-71. Benjamin Franklin, The
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. by Leonard Labaree, Ralph Ketcham,
Helene Boatfield, and Helene Fineman (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1964), p. 145.

25. Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, February 19, 1758, in The Papers
of Benjamin Franklin, ed. by Leonard Labaree, VI (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1963), p. 381.

26. Shards from Franklin's trash pit are described in the Franklin Court
Project's archaeological report. Barbara Liggett, Archaeology at Franklin's
Court (Harrisburg, Pa.: McFarland, 1973). On domestic manufavture, see:
Graham Hood, Bonnin and Morris of Philadelphia: The First American Porcelain
Factory, 1770-1772 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972);
John Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennslvania, 11 (Philadelphia: Carey
& Hart, 1844), p. 272.

27. F. Porter Smith, Chinese Materia Medica, revised by G. A. Stuart
(Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1911), pp. 301-2. The most
comprehensive single source on the use and marketing of ginseng within China
is Van Symons, "The Ch'ing Ginseng Monopoly," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Brown University, 1975. See also William Constable, "Two Notes on Ginseng,"
ca. 1787, New York Public Library, Constable-Pierrepont Collection: Letter:
Thomas Randall to Alexander Hamilton, Angust 14, 1791, in The Industrial and
Commercial Correspondence of Alexander Hamilton, ed. by Arthur Cole (Chicago:
A. W. Shaw Company, 1928), p. 132; J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (London:
Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1900), p. 268; Ulysses Hendrick, A History
of Agriculture in the State of New York (Albany: New York State Agricultural
Society, 1933), pp. 136-37; Brendan Jones, "Ginseng, Seoul's Oldest Export," N
ew York Times, March 14, 1971.

28. William Griffis, Corea. The Hermit Nation (New York: Scribner, 1882), pp.
388-89.

29. On Jesuits and the colonial ginseng trade, see Pierre Jartoux, "Lettre du
Pere [sic] Jartoux ... a Pekin, le 12. d'Avril 1711," Lettres Edifiantes et
Curieuses, X (Paris: jean Barbou, 1713), pp. 159-85; and Joseph Lafitau, Memoi
re ... Concernant. . . Gin-seng (Montreal: Typographie de Senecal, 1858).
Both Jartoux and Lafitau include drawings of the ginseng plant. The 1858
printing of Lafitau's 1718 memoir includes a preface entitled: "Le Pere
Lafitau et le Gin-seng." See also Joseph Lafitau, Moeurs des Sauvages
Ameriquains, 11 (Paris: Saugrain et Hochereau, 1724), pp. 141-42; Mark
Catesby, Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, 11 (Lon
don: Printed at the expense of the author, 1743), p. 16 of appendix; Justin
Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, IV (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1886), p. 289; Camille de Rochemonteix, Les Jesuites et In
Nouvelle-France an XVLLe Siecle, III (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1896), pp.
385-86; Reuben Thwaites, Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland:
Burrows Brothers, 1896-1901), LXVII, p. 333; LXXI, p. 347; Latourette, Relatio
ns, P. 10.

30. Watson, Annals, 11, p. 427.

31. Letter: James Pemberton to John Pemberton, December 18, 1752, Pemberton
Papers, VI 11, 112, HSP; William Speer, The Oldest and the Newest Empire (Hart
ford: S. S. Scranton, 1870), p. 410.

32. David MacPherson, Annals of Commerce, III (London: Nichols and Son et
al., 1805), p. 572; R. Fenton Duvall, "Philadelphia's Maritime Commerce with
the British Empire, 1783-1789," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Pennsylvania, 1960, p. 414.

33. For primary source material on Philadelphians' search for a northwest
route to China see Thomas Jefferys, The Great Probability of a Northwest
Passage (London: Thomas Jefferys, 1768). This work contains an appendix
entitled: "An Account of Labrador Being an Extract from a journal of a Voyage
made from Philadelphia in 1753." The authorship of the "Appendix" has been
attributed to Captain Swain of the Argo by Harold Eavenson in Two Early Works
on Arctic Exploration (Pittsburgh: no publisher cited, 1946). See also Berta
Solis-Cohen, "Philadelphia's Expeditions to Labrador", PH 19 (April 1952),
150-62; Edwin Balch, "Arctic Expeditions Sent From the American Colonies," PMH
B 31, no. 4 (1970), 419-28; Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt. Urban Life in
America 1743-1776 (New York: Knopf, 1955), p. 202; Bridenbaugh and
Bridenbaugh, Rebels, p. 329.
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