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America's First Adventure in China: Trade, Treaties, Opium, and Salvation. By John R. Haddad. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013. Pp. 283. Cloth, $35.00.)
Reviewed by Dong Wang
John Haddad has written an engaging and lucid account of Americans' early experience in Qing China from 1784-the year of the maiden voyage of the Empress of China from New York-to the 1860s, following the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion. Drawing on an extensive array of primary and secondary sources, Haddad brings to life the American story of the U.S.-Chinese encounter through skillful biographical studies of important historical figures. This approach lends color to topics covered in the classic works of diplomatic history, the best-known example of which is Kenneth Scott Latourette's The History of Early Relations between the United States and China, 1784-1844, first published in 1917.
The nine chapters of America's First Adventure in China focus on three categories of historical actors in early bilateral interactionsAmerican traders, Christian missionaries, and diplomats. Haddad pieces together the kaleidoscopic details of their varied experiences into one credible argument: that during this period the United States successfully established itself as a competitive new power, independent of Britain's dominance, in the Asia-Pacific. More than twenty American trading vessels anchored in Canton (Guangzhou) on average each year, totaling over six hundred ships between 1784 and 1814. The absence of official U.S. protection and bureaucratic institutions in China gave free rein to American entrepreneurism and pragmatism in the Qing Empire (1644-1911).
Haddad devotes his first three chapters to the Canton trade. Chapter 1 relates the voyage of the Empress of China in 1784,...