The Trade of the English East India Company in the Far East, 1623–84

Much has been written about British activities in the Far East, ¹ particularly in China, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, especially by American historians. Dr. H. B. Morse’s monumental Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China ² was first in the field and Professor E. H. Pritchard ³ and J. K. Fairbank ⁴ have been worthy successors. English scholarship on the subject is naturally somewhat older but, possibly for that reason, the work done has not usually been as detailed or thorough: an exception is Michael Greenberg’s recent book, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–42. ⁵ To find general surveys of Anglo- Chinese relations by British writers which extend back into the seventeenth century, it is necessary to turn to the books of A. J. Sargent ⁶ and J. Bromley Eames. ⁷ But as far as the seventeenth century is concerned historical research has been scanty. That Greenberg should have regarded a summary of events before the period with which he was immediately concerned as sufficient for his purpose was only natural. Fairbank’s introductory chapters are more comprehensive but show greater interest in the attitude of the Chinese to external intruders than in the efforts of the East India Company to intrude. Sargent, as he himself acknowledged, was mainly concerned with the nineteenth century and his attempt to provide a historical background was very superficial. Eamcs paid considerable attention to early British contacts with China but was prone to errors of fact which make him unreliable. It is to Morse and Pritchard, if at all, that one must turn for a detailed account of the ventures of the Company in China and elsewhere in the Far East between 1623 and 1648, ¹ but both The Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China and Anglo-Chinese Relations in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries are disappointing. For though Dr. Morse provided fuller information on the first English contacts with Formosa, China, and Tongking and the second trial of the Japan trade than had previously been done, his real interest lay in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Besides, while he wrote at some length on local conditions of trade in the Chinese ports and Taiwan, he included little information on the development of policy in London. Professor Pritchard did much to rectify this omission by outlining those forces in England which hindered, and indeed almost crippled, the East India Company for much of the seventeenth century, but he confined himself to a study of general trends and some of his statements rested on false premises.