ABSTRACT
A perspicacious reader might ask, “Why study any dead community at such length?” An answer to this question must necessarily be complex. Certainly the Canton firms produced business, financial, and lifestyle leaders among the American wealthier classes, especially in the northeast. Equally clear is the fact that among the American residents of old Canton lay the origin of American policy toward China. Because the community was so extraordinary, an acquaintance with its composition, activities, and attitudes is necessary for an understanding of that group and that policy. The life of the foreign enclave and the manner in which business was conducted shaped American attitudes, along with those of all foreigners on the China coast, and Americans, with their unusual democratic, New World orientation reacted in ways, which may have been unique among Western residents. In any case those attitudes continued throughout the nineteenth century.
