A Small Window for A Large View

The “Old China”, or canton trade system was emerged as the combinational result of the historical, political and economic factors in the 18^th century when the large countries of East and West had to compromise and negotiate acceptable rules for both sides to maintain profitable trade.

In history, the time before the canton trade system was a time full of wars and conquest all around the world. As the result of the time of Renaissance, European countries including Britain, Portugal, Spain, France and many other nations have developed the ship-building technology, and people came to realize there was a new world in the east to be discovered and conquered. China as a large country with borders across the sea and land with different countries, conflict in trade was inevitable. In order to provide a fair and stable environment, a unified trade system was called by all parties.

Politically, the old China state intended to monitor the trade market and wanted to set regulations for all the traders. As the lack of big and powerful ships, the monitoring work was sometimes hard to the old state. The canton trade system was established as a compromising way for the development of the trade with westerners.

Economically, traders, either the young people as first time going on the high sea or the elite businesspeople, were driven for profit. China was discovered at that time as a land full of luxuries. The artistic commodities, such as porcelain, lacquer, silk embroidery and the different product of tea all generated images of a wealthy, refined and artistic civilization to the eyes of westerners. The profitability was up to 400-500% for one single trip. Attracted by the high profitability, none of the traders would say no to any kind of trade system.

The choice of Canton (Guangzhou) as the official trading place for different countries was the mutual selection by most parties in the trade market. It reflected the self-centered culture of the ancient Chinese state which restricted the Westerners to enter the interior of China but allowed them to conduct business under governance.