Canton Factories
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Thirteen Factories, also known as the , was a neighbourhood along the Pearl River in southwestern Guangzhou (Canton) in the
Qing Empire The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
from to 1856 around modern day Xiguan, in Guangzhou's Liwan District. These warehouses and stores were the principal and sole legal site of most Western trade with China from 1757 to 1842. The factories were destroyed by fire in 1822 by accident, in 1841 amid the
First Opium War The First Opium War (), also known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Sino War was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of the ...
, and in 1856 at the onset of the
Second Opium War The Second Opium War (), also known as the Second Anglo-Sino War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a colonial war lasting from 1856 to 1860, which pitted the British Empire and the French Emp ...
. The factories' importance diminished after the opening of the treaty ports and the end of the Canton System under the terms of the 1842 Anglo-Chinese Treaty of Nanking. After the Second Opium War, the factories were not rebuilt at their former site south of Guangzhou's old walled city but moved, first to Henan Island across the Pearl River and then to Shamian Island south of Guangzhou's western suburbs. Their former site is now part of .


Terminology

The "factories" were not workshops or manufacturing centres but the offices, trading posts, and warehouses of foreign factors, mercantile
fiduciaries A fiduciary is a person who holds a legal or ethical relationship of trust with one or more other parties (person or group of persons). Typically, a fiduciary prudently takes care of money or other assets for another person. One party, for exampl ...
who bought and sold goods on consignment for their principals. The word derives from “feitoria” which means trading post in Portuguese (the first westerners to engage in trade with China). The foreign agents were known at the time as " supercargos" in English and as ''daban'' () in Chinese. This term's Cantonese pronunciation, ''
tai-pan A tai-pan (,Andrew J. Moody, "Transmission Languages and Source Languages of Chinese Borrowings in English", ''American Speech'', Vol. 71, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 414-415. literally "top class"汉英词典 — ''A Chinese-English Dictionary' ...
'', only came into common English use after the rise of private trading from 1834 on. A private captain might be his own supercargo; a large East Indiamen might have five or more, which were ranked "chief supercargo", "2nd supercargo", and so on. A team of supercargos divided their work, some overseeing sales, others tea purchases, silk purchases, and so forth. Permanent supercargos might divide their work by the order ships arrived. The bookkeepers who attended them were called "writers"; those serving with the ship, who also checked these accounts, "pursers". "Hong" is the Cantonese pronunciation of , the Chinese term for a properly-licensed business. By analogy, it was applied to its chief, the Hong merchant, and its property, the factories themselves. It has also been suggested the term was first applied to the factories as they were arranged in a row along the riverbank, "row" or "rank" being an alternative meaning of the same Chinese character. ''
Hoppo Hoppo or Administrator of the Canton Customs ( zh, t=粵海關部, s=粤海关部, p=Yuèhǎi Guānbù), was the Qing dynasty official at Guangzhou (Canton) given responsibility by the emperor for controlling shipping, collecting tariffs, and ma ...
'', or fully the "Canton Sea Customs Minister", was the imperial official responsible for imperial customs and supervised the other officials. The word is Chinese Pidgin English, and some speculated that it derived from ''
Hu Bu The Ministry or Board of Revenue was one of the Six Ministries under the Department of State Affairs in imperial China. Name The term "Ministry" or "Board of Revenue" is an English gloss of the department's purview. It is also similarly translate ...
'' (Board of Revenue), but the official had no connection to the Board. The Hoppo was responsible for fixing the charges levied as a ship entered the port, a responsibility that allowed him to become quite rich.


History

Since the Ming dynasty ( founded in 1368 ), a series of
sea ban The Haijin () or sea ban was a series of related isolationism, isolationist policies in China restricting private maritime trading and coastal settlement during most of the Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty. Despite official proclamations the M ...
s (''haijin'') restricted China's foreign commerce, at times attempting to ban it completely. In 1684, the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty allowed foreigners to trade with China in the four cities of Guangzhou, Xiamen, Songjiang, and
Ningpo Ningbo (; Ningbonese: ''gnin² poq⁷'' , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), formerly romanized as Ningpo, is a major sub-provincial city in northeast Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It comprises 6 urban districts, 2 sa ...
. In the case of Guangzhou, early traders were obliged to follow the monsoon winds, arriving between June and September, conducting their business, and then departing between November and February. The foreign ships were anchored downstream at
Pazhou Pazhou is a subdistrict of Haizhu in southeastern Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, in China. , formerly Whampoa Island, has a total area of and is the site of Pazhou Pagoda. Its eastern bay was formerly the chief anchorage for ships partic ...
(then known as "Whampoa"), with business conducted in the city's western suburbs. Western traders were further required to work through Chinese merchants who would guarantee their good behavior and tax obligations; they were also the owners and landlords of the warehouses and apartments the traders were obliged to use. In practice, private traders could often avoid these restrictions but the customs superintendent, the ''hoppo'', was always careful to enforce them upon large-volume purchasers such as the East India Company. Typically, cargo was ferried from the ships by its own crew and to the ships at the expense of the Chinese merchants on their "chop boats" (lighters). To avoid theft or piracy, foreign traders began assigning a few of their own seamen to these ships as guards. In 1686, Westerners were allowed to rent accommodations in the factory quarter to avoid the necessity of shuttling back to Pazhou each night. For the most part, the supercargos, their assistants, and the bookkeepers stayed at the factories, the crew—except for a few guards or those on shore leave—stayed with the ships, and the captains continued to ferry between the two. A Chinese
comprador A comprador or compradore () is a "person who acts as an agent for foreign organizations engaged in investment, trade, or economic or political exploitation". A comprador is a Indigenous peoples, native manager for a European business house in East ...
hired each factory's staff of Chinese servants and bought its provisions from local vendors; senior supercargos sometimes brought their own staff or slaves as well. Another comprador dealt with the ship's provisions at Pazhou, where
sampan A sampan is a relatively flat-bottomed Chinese and Malay wooden boat. Some sampans include a small shelter on board and may be used as a permanent habitation on inland waters. The design closely resembles Western hard chine boats like th ...
ladies crowded around the ships to do laundry and odd jobs for the sailors. A few weeks before departure, the crew came to the factories in shifts of a few days each for shore leave, chaperoned by some of the ship's officers. Hog Lane was lined with open-fronted booths and shops catering to them, selling food, drink, clothing, and "chowchows" (novelties), and was policed by Chinese guards stationed at both ends of the alley. At first the supercargos came and left with the ships, but over the course of the 18th century companies began to rent their factory spaces year-round to avoid being displaced on their return. The supercargos were then permitted to outstay their company's ships a few weeks to conduct business for the next season; after that, they were obliged to remove themselves to Macao through the spring and summer until the appearance of the next ship. By the 1760s, every East India company had permanent supercargos and rooms were being rented in Macao year-round as well. In the mid-1750s, the East India Company realized that the fees and prices were both better at Ningbo; it was also nearer the main centres of Chinese tea production and silk manufacture. The impact of their shift on Guangzhou's tax receipts and a fear of a second Macao being created prompted attempts to force Ningbo to make itself less attractive. When that failed, the
Qianlong Emperor The Qianlong Emperor (25 September 17117 February 1799), also known by his temple name Emperor Gaozong of Qing, born Hongli, was the fifth Emperor of the Qing dynasty and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1735 t ...
issued a 1757 edict closing all ports but Guangzhou's to most Westerners. In order to keep the traders in the factory area and out of the rest of the western suburbs, the 17 Chinese merchants of the port were obliged to establish the guild known to foreigners as the " Cohong" in 1760, each paying an entrance fee of around 10,000 Spanish dollars (74,000
tls TLS may refer to: Computing * Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication * Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs * Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating vari ...
.) and submitting to a levy of about 3% on their future business. Ten of the merchants did so, the fees establishing the Consoo Fund and
Hall In architecture, a hall is a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls. In the Iron Age and early Middle Ages in northern Europe, a mead hall was where a lord and his retainers ate and also slept. Later in the Middle Ages, the gr ...
, walkways, and a new street to which small-scale merchants were obliged to move in order to continue selling to the foreign traders. Since the new street was particularly full of porcelain dealers, it came to be known as China Street. The Hong merchants included Howqua (Wu Bingjian),
Puankhequa Puankhequa (; 171410January 1788), also known as Pan Wenyan or Zhencheng, was a Chinese merchant and member of a cohong family, which traded with the Europeans in Canton (now known as Guangzhou) during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). He owned a fa ...
, Mowqua, Goqua, Fatqua, Kingqua, Sunshing, Mingqua, Saoqua, and Punboqua.. Despite the existence of Sinophones and the linguists usually accompanying each ship, foreigners were notionally banned by imperial decree from learning the Chinese language, there being officially appointed translators for that purpose. The foreign traders—despite most working for government monopolies themselves—protested strongly at the Cohong's control over prices, advances, and exchange rates and predicted the death of trade with China. In fact, the Cohong helped ensure Chinese production met the traders' needs—some ships had previously been obliged to wait as much as a year to be fully stocked—and by 1769, the area was being expanded to make up for an extreme shortness of apartments. In 1748, there had only been eight factories, but there were seventeen by 1770, a number kept up until the great fire of 1822. It was discovered that, rather than depending on the monsoon winds, ships could arrive or depart at any time of year by rounding the Philippines. This opened the trade for smaller craft who might only need a few weeks to complete a visit, where the large company vessels still needed 4 to 5 months at minimum. Subsequently, the British and Americans typically always had ships anchored off Pazhou, allowing them to keep their supercargos and staff in the Guangzhou factories all year. During the 1780s, the Spanish also began to send several ships from Manila each year rather than the single vessel they had previously used; they began renting a permanent factory in 1788. (In practice, senior supercargos tended to prefer Macao during the summer regardless and to send their junior officers to deal with off-season trade.) In 1793, sent George Macartney to request that ports in northern China be opened to trade but was rejected by the Qianlong Emperor, not due to Macartney's refusal to kowtow in the presence of the
Qianlong Emperor The Qianlong Emperor (25 September 17117 February 1799), also known by his temple name Emperor Gaozong of Qing, born Hongli, was the fifth Emperor of the Qing dynasty and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1735 t ...
, as is commonly believed.Ch'ien Lung, (Qianlong) Letter to George III
/ref> A second embassy under
Lord Amherst Field Marshal Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, (29 January 1717 – 3 August 1797) was a British Army officer and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in the British Army. Amherst is credited as the architect of Britain's successful campaig ...
fared no better in 1816–1817. The growth of European (particularly British) tea consumption supplemented the port's heavy trade in silk and porcelain. The balancing trade in goods from Europe was poor so payments had to be settled in large volumes of
bullion Bullion is non-ferrous metal that has been refined to a high standard of elemental purity. The term is ordinarily applied to bulk metal used in the production of coins and especially to precious metals such as gold and silver. It comes from t ...
until the trade in
opium Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...
rose to take its place. In 1835, the medical missionary Peter Parker opened an ophthalmic hospital in the area. Parker commissioned Lam Qua, a Western-trained Chinese painter who also had workshops in the area, to paint pre-operative portraits of patients who had large tumors or other major deformities. The viceroy Lin Zexu's vigorous suppression of the British opium trade precipitated the
First Opium War The First Opium War (), also known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Sino War was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of the ...
(1839–1842), during which the factories were burnt to the ground. The 1842 Treaty of Nanking ending that war forced the ceding of
Hong Kong Island Hong Kong Island is an Islands and peninsulas of Hong Kong, island in the southern part of Hong Kong. Known colloquially and on road signs simply as Hong Kong, the island has a population of 1,289,500 and its population density is 16,390/km ...
to the British and opened the treaty ports of Shanghai, Ningbo ("Ningpo"), Xiamen ("Amoy"), and
Fuzhou Fuzhou (; , Fuzhounese: Hokchew, ''Hók-ciŭ''), alternately romanized as Foochow, is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian province, China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute t ...
("Fuchow"). It nominally opened the walled city of Guangzhou to the foreigners, but this was subsequently resisted by the city's
viceroys A viceroy () is an official who reigns over a polity in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. The term derives from the Latin prefix ''vice-'', meaning "in the place of" and the French word ''roy'', meaning " ...
on a number of pretexts. The factories were rebuilt at their former location but, with their diminished importance, they were not rebuilt a third time after their destruction at the onset of the
Second Opium War The Second Opium War (), also known as the Second Anglo-Sino War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a colonial war lasting from 1856 to 1860, which pitted the British Empire and the French Emp ...
. Instead, the foreign traders first operated off of Henan Island on the other side of the Pearl River and then, after the war's conclusion, rebuilt their Guangzhou operations at a new enclave on the Shamian sandbar south of the city's western suburbs.


Organization

Under the Canton System, between 1757 and 1842, Western merchants in China were restricted to live and conduct their business only in the approved area of the port of Guangzhou and only through government-approved merchant houses. Their factories formed a tight-knit community, which the historian Jacques Downs called a "golden ghetto" because it was both isolated and lucrative. These hongs—first established by Pan Zhencheng () and nine others in 1760—were granted a lucrative monopoly on foreign trade in exchange for various payments and obligations to the Qing state. The hongs were organised into a guild known as the cohong, which also oversaw the
Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...
and domestic trade in the South China Sea. The
Hoppo Hoppo or Administrator of the Canton Customs ( zh, t=粵海關部, s=粤海关部, p=Yuèhǎi Guānbù), was the Qing dynasty official at Guangzhou (Canton) given responsibility by the emperor for controlling shipping, collecting tariffs, and ma ...
was appointed by the emperor to oversee taxation and customs collection; he also oversaw disputes among the merchants, in an attempt to restrain the foreigners from contacting the imperial government in Beijing directly.


Architecture

The Western merchants were allowed to occupy two- or three-story buildings set back about from the river. Each factory contained a number of houses. The warehouses occupied the ground floors; the upper floors were taken up by living areas. The square in front of the factories was fenced off, with Chinese access restricted. There were no wells or access to running water. Chinese servants were used to bring in drinking and wash water and to empty the factories' chamber pots. The facades of the buildings used Western classical designs, but the structures otherwise were merchant buildings of local style. The layout featured courtyards, long, narrow hallways, with rooms on either side. Construction materials were local, such as brick with tile roofs, but the windows and stairs came from British sources abroad.


Layout

The area was bound on the north by on the west by and on the east by a small creek. and divided the groups of factories from one another and were lined by retail stores selling a wide variety of Chinese goods. Peter Parker's hospital was located at Lane. The exact number of factories varied, but by the early 19th century it became stable at 17 or 18 including, from east to west: The Chow-Chow Factory was indirectly linked to the British East India Company.


Legacy

The former site of the thirteen factories is now part of the Cultural Park. Thirteen Factories Street, which ran north of the enclave, is now named Shisanhang (Thirteen Factories) Road..


See also

* Canton System & Old China Trade * Hong & Cohong * Henan,
Pazhou Pazhou is a subdistrict of Haizhu in southeastern Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, in China. , formerly Whampoa Island, has a total area of and is the site of Pazhou Pagoda. Its eastern bay was formerly the chief anchorage for ships partic ...
, Changzhou, &
Xiaoguwei Xiaoguwei Island, formerly known in English as , is an island in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province, China. It is administered as Xiaoguwei Subdistrict, a subdistrict in Panyu District, Guangzhou. The Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Cen ...
islands * Dejima & Zaibatsu, Japanese equivalents *
Economy of China The China, People's Republic of China has an upper middle income Developing country, developing Mixed economy, mixed socialist market economy that incorporates economic planning through Industrial policy, industrial policies and strategic Five- ...
& the Economic history of imperial China


Notes


References


Citations


Bibliography

* . * * . * . * . * . * * . * . * .


External links

* . * . * . {{coord, 23.109743, N, 113.251607, E, display=title, region:CN_type:landmark History of Guangzhou History of foreign trade in China Business families Foreign relations of the Qing dynasty Cantonese merchants Former neighborhoods