China's Growing Trade with European Ships 1517-1800 (Part Two)
By James Graham
The Dutch were not granted the same privileges other tribute paying
nations received despite on the surface doing most things required
to fit into the Chinese world order. This was a demonstrable failure
of the tribute system to incorporate all nations into the Chinese
world order. The failure was not caused so much by the tribute system
itself as the Dutch as private citizens had no problem in performing
the kowtow in front of the Emperor. The problem lay in the interpretation
by each side of what the nature and function of a tribute mission
actually was. China viewed the missions as ceremonial acts of submission
and expected the Dutch to fulfil their obligations every eight years.
Conversely the Dutch saw the missions solely as a means to facilitate
important discussions and win the favour of court officials. Communication
differences plagued the two nations relations throughout the seventeenth
century causing frustration on both sides as each perceived the
other of not meeting their obligations. Combined with a decrease
in common interests the two nations preferred to let direct contact
die away. This left the Chinese-Dutch trade in the hands of the
Chinese and especially the Batavian Chinese who both operated completely
outside of the tribute system.
After 1685 the Ch'ing abandoned the link between the tribute system
and international trade. Maritime trade remained highly regulated
and centralised but fiscal concerns became paramount. This change
resulted from the defeat of the last Ming loyalists, the capture
of Taiwan and thus the consolidation of Manchu rule in China. The
tribute system may have been relaxed but the pattern of trade and
the Chinese world order were mostly unaffected. European maritime
trade while allowed to grow was restricted to the Canton area after
1760 and overseen by customs officials. In practical terms the Europeans
preferred Canton because of its location closer to Europe. The opening
of China to foreign trade was driven by a new sense of security
and a desire to extract revenue from trade.
The British were able to trade in Canton for the whole of the eighteenth
century without being required to pay tribute. Only when they wanted
access to an increased number of Chinese ports did the British send
a tribute mission lead by Macartney in 1793. The Chinese government
refused to meet their requests and the British remained restricted
to trading in the Canton area well into the nineteenth century.
The Chinese viewed this trade very much in their tradition of accepting
trade on the frontier as a means to pacify non-Chinese groups. Thus
to them restricting maritime trade to Canton was the best way to
balance the powerful Europeans and to preserve order and culture
within the empire. While the tribute system declined in importance
in the eighteenth century, it did so merely to accommodate an increased
number of civilised states into the Chinese world order.
The Europeans constantly faced different rules and higher costs
in their trade with China than did China's traditional tributary
states. Excluding precious metals there was little desire in China
for anything the Europeans had to trade. This position of relative
strength allowed China to draw the Europeans into its world order
largely on Chinese terms. China's tribute system however did not
extend to Chinese who went abroad to trade and to Chinese in foreign
countries who traded with China. This could have been construed
as an unfair advantage and that it was not is evidence of how dependent
on China the maritime powers actually were.
Unlike other tributary nations, the Europeans paid tribute solely
to gain commercial concessions or political leverage in China. Trade
in Peking that tributary missions facilitated was only ever a by-product
and of little interest. The maritime powers also found the ritual
obligations and restrictions of tribute missions made negotiation
difficult and limited their usefulness. When they did pay tribute,
the Europeans participated in the ritualistic nature of the Chinese
tribute system and accepted its implied inferiority as a commercial
necessity. John Wills Jr comment that the Dutch "did not worry
very much what an embassy meant to the heathen, so long as they
knew what it really meant in Western international law" is
doubtless true of all the Europeans. The unsatisfactory results
of their tribute missions and the end of the Roman Catholic-Protestant
world war in 1648 led the Europeans to focus on developing their
commercial operations within the existing commercial environment
in China at the time. For their part, the Chinese were content to
tolerate a variety of practical arrangements and did not try to
persuade the Europeans to resume their tributary relationship. French,
Danes and Norwegians all traded in China without ever entering the
tribute system. All were relatively minor players and confined their
activities to the Canton area. The Chinese assumed in time their
civilising influence would again encourage the Europeans to pay
homage to the Chinese Emperor. The Canton system of trade in the
eighteenth century had little relation to the tribute system.
China relied on its tribute system to subordinate non-Chinese to
the Emperor and thus maintain its perception of a world dominated
by Chinese civilisation. More flexibility however was applied to
states whose power was an actual threat to China itself. The working
of the tribute system was hence dependent on the internal strength
of China relative to the foreign nations that it was in contact
with. Between 1517 and 1800 this power while suffering a slow relative
decline was still sufficient to encourage the European maritime
powers to seek and accept accommodation within the Chinese world
order. In the eighteenth century, European maritime trade clearly
operated outside the tribute system and furthermore remained acceptable
to the Chinese. This made the Chinese-led world order a fiction
only the Chinese continued to believe in, if even then
