In the spring of 1843, after a number of lively and often heated debates, the United States Congress approved funds for the first US mission to China. President John Tyler spoke of the mission as one of great "magnitude and importance“67 and Secretary of State Daniel Webster called it "a more important mission than ever proceeded from this Country, and more important mission than any other, likely to succeed it, in our day.“68 Indeed, this mission, led by former congressman Caleb Cushing, resulted in the first US treaty with China (the Treaty of Wangxia,1844), which secured trading privileges for American merchants and opened a host of Chinese ports to serve as outlets for surplus American production. Contained within the treaty was also the first appearance of a most favored nation clause-inserted in order to assure the US of the same privileges in China as might be granted any other nation. The impetus for this mission was the threat of British monopoly of the Pacific markets. American rivalry with Britain for the markets and influence in the Pacific forced US politicians and bureaucrats to assume a positive role in East Asia in the early 1840s.

For decades, American merchants in China had requested greater US government presence, but these requests went ignored until Britain gained new and improved trading rights in the wake of the Opium War in 1842. These new rights by their rivals forced American politicians either to move to formalize trade relations with China and secure similar privileges, or to face the possibility of the loss of a potentially large market to the British. The mission to China in 1843-44, and the treaty that resulted from it was the reflection of a strong and autonomous China policy; a policy that found another voice in the Open Door notes half a century later.

The US mission to China of 1843-44-also known as the Cushing mission in honor of the man who led it-initiated the long and still evolving history of the United States government's positive role in the affairs of its interests and its citizens' interests in East Asia. The treaty that resulted from the mission secured early advantages and inaugurated a positive position for US representatives to act in China. This built a counterbalance to Britain and allowed the US to begin shoring up regional influence and control in the construction of its East Asia link in the new spatial order, and from which everything else would follow. Historians seeking the origin of the United States' China policy have, however, dismissed the Cushing mission and the Wangxia treaty. Overlooking this seminal development in the first half of the nineteenth century, they have instead placed the inception of US China policy at the turn of the century with. the proclamation of the Open Door Policy in 1898 and the possession of the Philippines as a means to access the China market. 69 Not until this time, the conventional argument goes, did the US begin to play an active and independent role in the region as it took colonies and exerted its will in the face of European colonial aggression in the region. Working on the thesis that cooperation and comity existed between the United States and Britain, these scholars argue that prior to the Open Door policy the US merely followed the lead set by Britain in China. Seeing the absence of a truly independent American China policy, the eminent China historian John King Fairbank tenned the notion of a US China policy prior to 1898 a "misconception." 70

Historians have not completely ignored the Cushing mission, to be sure. Rather than interpreting this mission as the expression of a US China policy, they have instead read their sources in a way that has turned the treaty of Wangxia into a mimesis of British activity and China policy. Myopic views of Americans in East Asia and their government's role have blinded us to the global order at stake. Indeed, China scholars consistently emphasized cooperation rather than conflict in Anglo-American relations in China in the nineteenth century. A corollary to this view of Anglo-American comity downplays the independence of US foreign policy in regard to China in deference to Britain's dominant role. Scholars argue that Britain held the initiative in China, and the US remained content to allow the British to dictate the terms of trade in China, accepting and taking advantage of the British use of force to open the country to Western penetration. That is, the US simply followed in Britain's wake. In this context, the Treaty of Wangxia is commonly seen not as an American initiative, but rather as a Chinese response. In the words of historian Tong Te-kong, the treaty becomes merely "a natural sequence of the growing Chinese policy of appeasement that followed the Opium War.,,71

Tyler Dennett's Americans in Eastern Asia set a precedence for the field, and historians have yet been unable to overcome it Published in 1922, Americans in Eastern Asia was the first comprehensive work to cover US foreign relations in East Asia in the nineteenth century, and has remained to this day the primary reference on the subject.

Organized as a chronological, blow-by-blow account of American diplomacy, Dennett's theme revolved around the necessity of American cooperation with other Western powers, especially Britain, in shaping a stable and peaceful Asian order conducive to US commercial interests. This cooperative policy, according to Dennett, waxed in the mid nineteenth century (only encountering minimal friction in the 1850s), and waned in the late-nineteenth century with the emergence of an isolationist agenda and the 1898 occupation of Philippines.72 In explaining the US government's decision to pursue a treaty with the Chinese in 1843, Dennett moved effortlessly from the complaints of American merchants in 1839 and their petition to Congress for greater representation, to the point where "Congress becomes interested." Dennett simply credited the growth of trade and a new found interest of the American public in China as the motive behind this action.73

For Dennett, US action in China did not rise to an expression of its own independent US China policy. In fact, Dennett never comes out and expresses exactly what American action constituted beyond the groping for direction in the young republic. Instead he emphasizes cooperation where a framework of rivalry might have served as a better explanatory tool: "cooperation failed because other cooperating powers sought to wrest the power of that cooperation to serve their separate purposes.“74 Unable to place this breakdown of relations among the powers within a cooperation predetennined by the historian, and the origins of the US government initiatives for Asia, Dennett passed it off with the repeated emphasis of "confusion": American confusion over China, over the international situation, over the role of diplomats in the China trade, (Dennett's own confusion on how to comprehend the Anglophobic policies of the US ministers to China).

 

All this under the book's section heading "A Period of Confusion."

Dennett's contemporary influences betray the book's prejudices. Working shortly after World War I, Dennett's era was pregnant with international comity. The Allies, consisting of the strongest bond between the US and Britain, had just defeated Germany, Wilsonian democracy was on the march, the League of Nations enjoyed considerable prestige, and in 1922 the Washington Conference was underway, creating treaties to limit armament and establish a lasting peace through the cooperation of states. In short, the modern world appeared to have been built on international cooperation. It was a world in which Dennett could conceive of nothing other than cooperation among Western powers, not to mention the bond between the two English-speaking partners. Even in their own self-interests, the order of cooperation stood as the cornerstone of all world history. Dennett says as much in his preface: "The real issue was whether the United States should follow an isolationist or cooperative policy." For Dennett, in the end the US chose cooperation, which failed due to other powers' sabotage. Such a fate, Dennett warns in 1922, we should learn from for "The present policy may easily be wrecked upon a similar reef.“75

Dennett's successors never broke free from his influence. Building on Dennett's theme of cooperation, historians made the jump to posit the benefits this cooperation brought to China. Indeed, Western involvement in China was seen as an action that resulted in something positive-namely the modernization of China-and was accomplished through cooperation. British and American interaction with China brought China into the international community, established functioning institutions of trade, commerce and finance. Without the presence of these powers, China would have been left behind and cut out of the international system, to suffer dearly for it later in the twentieth century. An "Us versus Them" picture was painted, and the West cast as a cooperative whole led by Britain and its empire. As a result, historians read their sources in a way reflective of their worldview, sweeping aside any dissonance. Take for example John King Fairbank when forced to confront blatant animosity towards the British by a US trade official: "The real American policy," Fairbank checked, ''was usually to acquiesce.. . with British policy."76

Fairbank took this point to an extreme. In his article "'American China Policy' to 1898: A Misconception", published in 1970, and in his general history The United States and China, Fairbank argued that the US had no China policy prior to 1898. For Fairbank, Britain's involvement and activity in China dictated American involvement in China for the entire nineteenth century. "The most basic decisions affecting American activity in China were made in London," Fairbank wrote." For Fairbank, American Far East involvement can only be understood in the broader context of British imperial policy in the region. The US did not have a voice in the treaty system institution. Rather the entire institution ran on British decisions and for the eventual advantage of all Western capitalists. As such, the US did not have a China policy. Rather the British controlled everything and Americans took advantage of the benefits secured by the British. Fairbank noted that this situation led scholars to the misconception that the US had purely economic rather than political interests in China. Because Americans articulated political neutrality at the time, Fairbank argued, they came to believe that the US indeed maintained complete political neutrality. In fact, according to Fairbank, the international system backed by Britain allowed the US the space to take a political interest in China but abstain from forming a political agenda; to reap the privileges gained by Britain while evading the moral burden that came with securing those privileges. "Our national interest was to keep up with the Joneses, and also be friends with the Wangs and Lins whose house the Joneses were breaking into.“78 Other histories of modem China generally follow Fairbank's lead.79 Warren I. Cohen glossed over US diplomatic presence in China in the nineteenth century, summing up with the statement that, "the Americ&ts followed the British.“80 Immanuel Hsu, in his much acclaimed and many times reprinted The Rise of Modern China, recounted this period of history by emphasizing the cooperation of the Western powers in China. He detailed how the US plenipotentiary Reed in the first treaty revision in 1858 was instructed to "cooperate" with the British and French while reassuring the Chinese that the US had no designs on its territory.81

By positing cooperation and not rivalry between Britain and the US in China, the literature on US-China relations has created an anomaly in the history of US diplomatic history. Kinley J. Brauer's excellent study of Anglo-American conflicts in economic expansion from 1815-60, for example, explores the rivalry between the two powers around the globe stating that "In virtually all instances...[American diplomats] found themselves in conflict with British diplomats... Only in China did British and American merchants function in substantial harmony.“ 82 While puzzling, or even suspicious, in the face of Anglo-American rivalry elsewhere in the world, this picture of Anglo-American harmony in China has largely been accepted on the authority of the works cited above. Nonetheless, by merely scratching the surface of the archives one can in fact find a plethora of correspondence and speeches pronouncing the animosity between British and Americans in China.

In contrast to conventional interpretations, this chapter argues that United States China policy-that is, active government participation in promoting its merchants' interests in China and a positive role in the penetration of the China market-began more than a half century before the Open Door notes and was in fact reflected in the Treaty of Wangxia. What follows is an exploration of why and at what point US politicians and officials became interested in direct intervention in China, and thus constructed the United States' foundational China policy. If Britain secured privileges and monopolized the Pacific market, it would shut the US out of a lucrative market and challenge this forming concept of a new spatial order of the earth. This made a mission to China of immediate and utmost importance, just as those in the highest political offices in the United States articulated Recognition of the role of Anglo-American rivalry should change the conventional understanding of the development of US-China relations and force us to revise our premises of Western penetration in China. We here challenge this assumption of Anglo-American comity in China in the early and mid-nineteenth century-something that even the purveyors of this view admit was an anomaly to the general antagonistic state of Anglo-American relations in this period. This understanding forces us to revise our views of the system of Western penetration into China (or the treaty port system) that emerged following the Opium War. This penetration did not occur, as often portrayed, as a collaborative conspiracy among Western powers to exploit China, but rather as a competition among them. Here we find each nation vying for economic power in a land of quiescent yet latent profit, and determined not to let the other gain an advantage.

Early American trade with China has been well documented. 83 In 1784 the first American merchant ship-the Empress of China- reached Canton carrying ginseng and returning with black tea. The cost of the voyage came to around $120,000, while returns yielded an insubstantial $37,727.84 Although not profitable, it captured the imagination of the American merchant community and that by the end of the decade American trade in Canton had become finnly established. The christening voyage carried American ginseng, yet given the American consumer's growing appetite for Chinese tea, and the limited need of the Chinese for American ginseng, the US needed to find more trade goods to sell to China. Struggling to keep a trade balance, American merchants soon discovered the attraction of Oregon furs to the Chinese. By 1801 at least fourteen American merchant ships took part in the fur trade; buying pelts from Northwestern American Indians to shuttle to China and sell for large profits and return to New York loaded with tea. High profits attracted more traders so that prior to the outbreak of the War of 1812, over forty American merchant ships frequented Canton each year, delivering almost $6 million worth of US goods annually,85 which accounted for around ten percent of total US exports.86

After a lull due to British military activity against American merchants during the War of 1812, US trade with China resumed with increasing vigor. By the early l830s, for example, over sixty US ships visited Canton yearly, exchanging over US$8 million in trade annually.87 US total annual exports in the same period averaged $70-90 million.88

The China trade had become a major staple now in the US export market, averaging just under ten percent of total exports annually. The US House Committee on Commerce remarked as early as 1822 that "with China the American trade is inferior to that of no nation, Great Britain excepted.“89 Included in this burgeoning trade were new products that contributed directly to the US economy. Cotton, for one, first went out to China in 1826, and increased steadily over the following decades. By the end of the 1830s, US cotton exports to China had increased almost twenty fold to over a quarter million US dollars. In 1845, the US exported US$2 million worth of cotton to China, accounting for four percent of total US cotton exports-making China an increasingly important market for US agriculture.9O In order to help pay for the amounts of tea and silk Americans consumed, American merchants participated in the burgeoning illegal opium trade with China, where huge profits were made.91

The growing American presence in the Chinese ports came at the expense of their British counterparts, which ultimately pitted the two powers against each other. Peddling furs in Canton, Americans could beat the British to market and sell teas and silks in England quicker than the British merchants. This created, what historian J. Wade Caruthers calls, "ill feeling and mistrust." A comparison of the number of ships trading between the American Northwest coast and China shows the con-elation between the rise of American ships and the decline of British ships. From 1788-1794, Britain had thirty five ships and America fifteen. From 1795-1804, British ships had declined to nine and America increased to fifty. From 1805-1814, Britain had only three ships and America forty.92

Still, on average, British merchants outdid their American counterparts. They generally exported four or five times as much tea as the Americans, and sometimes over fifteen times as much, and continuously had more vessels exporting the product. 93 During the War of 1812 American merchants nearly stopped visiting China altogether out of fear of capture by the British, and those that did continually found themselves victim to British blockades and pirating. In one instance a clash between US and British merchant ships resulted in the death of the US captain and the seizing of his ship.94 Indeed, as J.N. Reynolds wrote in the early 1830s, "Our grand competitors, the English, are looking out for every advantage which the new state of things may offer in China-we cannot be idle or indifferent spectators.“95

Despite the increasing Anglo-American competition in the China market, and the numerous calls on the US government by diplomats and merchants like Reynolds, Washington remained aloof. Decades of American merchant and consular requests for government involvement and diplomatic action failed to elicit even a response ftom the state department. This was in part due to the fact that the US was still small and government resources limited-the government had not the funds to freely spend on diplomacy.96 Similarly, the China trade had not yet reached the imagined potential of those involved. Chinese imports were high, to be sure, but American exports were not. In fact, Americans had created a huge trade imbalance in China's favor. In the decade from 1831-1841 the US exported $14.2 million worth of goods to China, but imported $65.2 million, realizing a trade imbalance of over $50 million.97 This is to highlight that China had not become the giant market Americans of the day thought it was destined to be.

But furthermore, a positive government role in the private sphere stood against the philosophical convictions of Americans who railed against monarchical control and the invasion of the state into the affairs of its citizens. Yet there would come a point indeed many points in time-in which the state needed to play a positive role not only to guarantee economic advantages for its subjects, but also for the sake of its very own survival. In China that point would come both because of the reality of a market under threat and as a step to realize the new spatial order of the earth. When Britain negotiated superior trade advantages with China through military means, and threatened to lock up the Pacific order, then, and only then, the US government saw the need to send an official mission to China to negotiate a treaty of its own. It was the conception of a new spatial order of the earth compounded by the Anglo-American rivalry that pushed the US to move from a neutral role to a positive one and act in China.

As Americans' interaction and fascination with China grew, conflicts with the Chinese government arose which became more than just grievances, and actually hindered Americans conducting trade in China. There were no set taxes or duties in China, but rather a collection of fees that fluctuated arbitrarily. On top of these trade fees, extractions such as measurement duties for the size of the ship, a "cumshaw tax" in the form of extralegal fees and percentages to Chinese officials, as well as linguist and comprador fees also were paid out to the Chinese. For example, the owner of the ship Lion from New York had a fme of $2,000 charged to him in 1816 ''by the Hoppo [the Western name for the Chinese official in charge of trade at Canton] for suspicion of smuggling on board ship," which his Chinese trade partner said he better pay without complaint 98 On top of this, the Chinese government placed various restrictions on trade, such as the prohibition of ships carrying only specie, trading in opium, or the export of bullion or rice. And saltpeter-a key ingredient in the making of gunpowder-could only be sold to the government. Furthermore, the government put strict limitations on the movement of foreign merchants. This became a serious issue among all foreign merchants doing business in China, not just Americans, as they were confined to only the single port of Canton to trade and could not enter the cities; could not bring women; and were limited in the number of servants they employed.99 All this created a general feeling of inequality and resentment among all foreign merchants residing and doing business in China. But more so, the merchants had no channel through which to address grievances; no diplomatic envoy existed to represent their interests. The ransacking of the ship Wabash of Baltimore and the killing of its crew by fifteen Chinese as it anchored at Macao in 1817, for example, left the surviving crew with no other course of grievance than a letter home to the State Department. 100 Then there was the case of Francis Terranova, who accidentally killed a Chinese woman in 1821. Chinese authorities demanded that the American captain of the ship which employed Terranova turn him over so that justice could be served. To achieve this end, the Chinese enacted an embargo against American trade. Without any diplomatic channels. the American merchants could do nothing but oblige. Terranova was subsequently executed by strangulation by the Canton government.101

Confronting such an atmosphere, American merchants in China had, from the beginning, petitioned the US government for representation. Although a US consul in Canton was appointed as early as 1786, the appointees were either supercargoes or merchants who stayed on from a journey to oversee trade; they had no funds or resources and often did not draw a salary.102 As early as 1807 a group of thirteen American merchants, headed by Daniel Stansbury of Perkins and Company, penned a letter to the President of the United States requesting "a more efficient consular establishment be formed." They further bemoaned that "every European nation has one or more experienced physicians attached to their factories, who take no pay for their services; this has brought the Americans of all classes to the situation of paupers, degrading to themselves as individuals, and to the flag they sail and live under.“103 In his records of the Pacific voyage of the U.S.S. Potomac, J.N. Reynolds suggested that "it is time our public vessels were on the ground, under judicious instructions, that our knowledge may keep pace with the events as they transpire.. . At no period of our history has this knowledge of China been so essential to our interests as at the present moment." He went on to quote a British writer who suggested that Her Majesty's Government pursue a more active policy in China and demand diplomatic equality ftom the Chinese. Reynolds writes that "We too, must be on the alert. to show the Chinese that we have naval power to any extent we please.“104 In the mid 1830s the US consul in Batavia. John Shillaber, wrote a letter to the US president and another letter to the Secretary of State about the need for a greater US role in China. even suggesting to send a US naval force to the China coast to protect merchants there. "American interests would probably be more or less served by a consul with some peculiar powers and instructions to meet the expected changes and exigencies.. .and with official Powers from the American government to present himself to the Chinese authorities, as its representative, and for the care and protection of American citizens and their rights and property.“105

The US government remained aloof to these merchant cries in the early half of the nineteenth century. Happy that their citizens' had met success in the Far East and prospered in trade, the US expressed only its contentment to have trade continue with minimal interferences. Merchant requests for diplomatic representatives and a naval force went unanswered. Even the portrait of an impending crisis painted by the experienced Consul Shillaber, and his urgent recommendations for a US ministerial presence in China, fell on deaf ears.106 As President Andrew Jackson put it in his annual message to the Congress in 1831, "To China and the East Indies our commerce continues its usual extent." He elaborated no further, and said nothing of diplomatic representation with China throughout his presidency, nor did any of his nineteenth-century predecessors or successors until Tyler in 1842.107 Not until Britain threatened to monopolize China trade did Washington politicians begin to listen to its merchants' cries.

From 1839 to 1842 Britain engaged China in what became known as the Opium War. Facing the same confining conditions of trade and movement in China as their American counterparts, Britain did not fail to press the case through military pressure when the opportunity presented itself. Acting on the "illegal" seizure of British opium bound for the China market, the British government demanded redress; and failing to get it, shelled Canton and sent gunboats north towards the Chinese capital. As part of the settlement of the war, signed in 1842 as the Nanjing Treaty, Britain secured for its merchants a host of trade privileges, including greater access to Chinese markets through the opening of more ports to British ships.

Cooperation between Britain and the US in exploiting China was not a feature of the Anglo-American relationship during this war. In fact American suspicion increased as Britain prepared for hostilities against China in 1839. Catching word of the impending British blockade of Canton in early 1840, the US Consul, P.W. Snow, wrote a stem letter to the senior officer commanding the British fleet: "I now enter my most solemn protests against the establishment of a blockade so illegal, and consequently, unjust. And I do hereby declare, in behalf of my Government, that I shall hold the Government of Great Britain responsible for any act of violence on citizens of the United States, or their property.“108 Or Cushing, who took the floor in the House in March 1840 and decried not the behavior and attitude of the Chinese but rather British action, and who denounced rumors that the US was "to join heart and hand with the British Government, and endeavor to obtain commercial treaties trom the authorities in China." Such a disposition of cooperation, Cushing said, "is a great misconception... God forbid that I should entertain the idea of co-operating with the British Government in the purpose-if purpose it have-of upholding the base cupidity and violence, and high handed inftaction of all law, human and divine, which have characterized the operations of the British, individually and collectively in the seas of China.“109

Conflict between Britain and China did however provoke new calls for action by Americans in China. On the eve of British hostilities, American merchants sent a number of pressing letters to Washington politicians warning of a possible British monopoly and requesting immediate government diplomatic and naval support. The first of these letters, dated May 25, 1839, and signed by eight American merchants, recount the beginnings of the Opium War then stirring between Britain and China, and how, as Western merchants, they had been caught in the middle. The merchants' letter relates how Chinese officials seized and destroyed British opium, made the Americans prisoners in their own factories and threatened them with severe penalties for refusing to sign a bond prohibiting the trade of opium, the breaking of which would sentence the trader to death. Vexed at the "injustice of China to arbitrarily end opium trade and seize property," the merchants drew up a list of six demands for the US government to press upon China. These demands included a minister in Beijing, fixed tariffs, a system of warehouses, opening of more ports, compensation for the loss of trade, and only the enactment of US laws for American citizens. The eight cosigners "express our opinions that the United States Government should take immediate measures" to send a commercial agent to negotiate a treaty with China and to send a naval force for the protection of Americans' property.110

In similar tone but with greater urgency came another letter signed by thirty-eight Boston and Salem merchants in China. Sent directly to the House of Representatives. The merchant consortium wrote to inform their government that British hostilities had indeed broken out against China, and that pirating on the China coast disrupted trade. "We have reason to fear that hostilities will ensue between British and Chinese, during the spring and summer, and that, upon the general ground of protection to our citizens and property from the violence and chaos which always accompanies war, American interests require the presence of a respectable national force in the China waters."111 Under the new circumstances accompanying the Opium War, these letters found an audience in the US House of Representatives. Massachusetts Congressman Lawrence presented the first letter to the House on January 9, 1840, which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.112 His colleague, Congressman Abraham Lincoln, presented the memorial from the Boston and Salem merchants on April 9, 1840, which also went to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.113

It was at this point, then, that US politicians began to take an intense interest in the affairs of China and the rights of its merchants. Certainly trade with China had grown to a point in which it was "only exceeded by that of trade with Britain, France and Spain," as Congressman Cushing pointed out in 1840 in a letter to the Secretary of State and copied to the President. Trade, and the facilitation of trade, did playa role in the US decision to secure its own treaty with China. As Cushing said: "I feel strongly persuaded that the foremost... [illegible]...is to enter into relations with China.“114 But Britain loomed large. When the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, on which Cushing sat as a leading Whig, passed a resolution on February 7, 1840 requesting all White House and Treasury reports on China, it also called for an investigation into British intentions in China.115 Thus the British threat in combination with growing trade drew American attention to this issue. A secret letter to Secretary of State Webster from an American in Britain summed up the situation in China: "England can have the whole empire if they want it. I have seen a letter from a [British] Gentleman in Ningpho who wrote that he is a civil Governor and Judge, and that he proceeds from place to place, in carriage, with two Chinese, with Bamboos, to clear the road for him of the multitude...and that he governs nearly a million of people without difficulty.“1l6 Through such correspondence politicians in Washington came to find the British assuming greater and greater control in China, which they feared could ultimately be used to exclude the US.

The next January (1841), as hostilities between China and Britain raged, President Van Buren and his Secretary of State Forsyth held a special meeting with Peter Parker, a Protestant medical missionary who had lived in China since 1834. Parker had returned home for a visit and to argue the need for an official diplomatic treaty between the US and China. He met later that month with Daniel Webster-who would become the Secretary of State with the new administration in March-and explained ''the expediency of improving the present unprecedented Crisis in the relation of this Government and China, to Send a Minister Plenipotentiary, direct and without delay to the Court of Taou Kwang [Daoguang, the emperor of China].',117 Parker met again with the highest echelons of the US government before he returned to China, holding audience with President Tyler and Secretary Webster on September 14, 1841. Congressman John Quincy Adams, whom Parker visited after his meeting, wrote, "Dr. Parker said he had seen the President, who assured him that he had his eye fixed upon China, and would avail himself of any favorable opportunity to commence negotiation with the Celestial Empire.“118

US merchants cried vehemently in their letters, and politicians passed resolutions in Congress, yet still the US government took no action to actively address the situation in China. Not until the British signed the first commercial treaty with China in August 1842 did the US administration find itself in a position where it could no longer afford to remain diplomatically aloof from developments. This resulted in the President's special message to Congress, drafted by Webster, requesting funds to send to China what would become the Cushing Mission.

Britain's position in East Asia and the Pacific threatened the Americans and an increasingly important American market Or, as Caleb Cushing put it in a personal letter to President Tyler, "It is said that Sir Henry Pottinger [British diplomat and first governor of Hong Kong] contemplates if permitted by his government to move his forces against Japan and compel the government of Japan to open its ports to the commerce of England. If the British Empire should accomplish this further object possessing as it now does a strong position on the Columbia River in constant intercessions with Canada it needs only then to seize on the Sandwich Islands [Hawaii] to have a complete belt of fortresses environing the globe, to the immense future peril, not only of our territorial possessions, but of all our vast commerce on the Pacific.“119

When Cushing dashed off this letter to the President in December 1842 Britain had just signed the first commercial treaty with China securing greater trading privileges and giving them unparallel influence and markets in the region. Cushing believed that in order to counter this threat the US needed to act swiftly and sign a commercial treaty with China giving American merchants similar if not better trading privileges than their European counterparts, and it was Cushing, the ardent Anglophobe, who would lead the charge.

Caleb Cushing takes center stage in the formation of early US China policy, if not stealing the show. As a representative in the United States Congress he was one of the first politicians to argue for a US government presence in China to protect the interests of American merchants. He was a close friend of both President Tyler and Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and served as an advisor to both men. The speeches and documents of the President and Secretary of State in their own arguments for a China mission reflect the arguments and at times even wording of Cushing's private correspondence with each of them. It thus comes as no surprise to find Cushing leading the mission to China and his signature on the treaty beside his Chinese counterpart.

As important an agent as Cushing was in the formation of US China policy, we must view the man not as an individual subject who promoted and developed policy, but rather as the embodiment of the forces and attitudes that gave rise to the policy. Cushing represents both literally and figuratively the interests of Americans in China and their Anglophobic sentiment. As a United States Congressman he represented the interests of his Massachusetts constituents, most of whom owed their wealth and prosperity to overseas trade. As the eldest son of a merchant family he had personal ties with the China trade. His father had a trading establishment in Oregon, which, as detailed above, was poised to access the China market, and his cousin, J.P. Cushing was head of Perkins and Company, one of the largest American merchant houses in China. Furthermore, Cushing, like many of his contemporaries, held the deep convictions of the moral supremacy of the United States and its destiny to expand to all quarters of the earth through the strength and character of its people not the power of its government. Likewise, his bitter and often rapacious hatred of the British resounded the sentiments of most Americans. In Caleb Cushing, therefore, we find not an exception who bent the age to his will, but rather the embodiment of Americans' interests, ideologies, and desires through which America's China policy was articulated.

Cushing was born in 1800 on the coast of Massachusetts in the port town of Newburyport. At seventeen years old he graduated from Harvard as what his biographers describe as a "master botanist and brilliant linguist." Ralph Waldo Emerson considered Cushing the most eminent scholar of the era, and House member Robert Winthorp wrote of his then colleague's "wonderful versatility.. .and prodigious intellectual and physical energy." Even those who found fault with Cushing's personality gave him their utmost respect. As Washington observer Benjamin B. French said, „brilliant and cold as an icicle. A man of splendid intellect and of the best possible education, but of unbounded ambition." Cushing entered law and established his own very successful law practice in Newburyport. At twenty-four years old he was elected to the state legislature, and two years later made a failed bid for the House. Nine years later, in 1835, he was elected to the House on an anti-Jackson ticket and held his seat for three tenns before stepping down in 1841.120 He worked on presidential campaigns and was later appointed Attorney General of the United States in the Pierce administration.

Cushing was from the very beginning an Anglophobe. He hated the British whom he refelcted to as "our greatest enemy,,,121 and waged a verbal war against England his entire career. So often did Cushing revile against Britain that his senior colleague in the House, John Quincy Adams, said, "Cushing thought that inflammatory declamations against England upon all possible topics was the short cut to popularity, and he speechified accordingly." 122 Cushing's biographer Claude M. Fuess draws this Anglophobia back to his childhood where the Napoleonic wars put New England ship owners in danger of destruction by British cruisers and President Jefferson prohibited all export trade. This subsequently ruined the livelihood of Cushing's hometown, not to mention his father's trading business. "Even a visit to England," Fuess writes of Cushing's trip to Britain in 1830, "could not eradicate Cushing's insuperable prejudice against the people of that country.“123

Cushing's abhorrence of Britain went beyond mere childhood resentment, however. Like his contemporaries, and the founding fathers, his philosophy railed against the monarchs of Europe and the aristocracy of the old world-which, he said, "held the whole country and drained its population to augment their own already opulence and luxury“124 to embrace what he saw as "the highest civilization of Christendom," in the form of the United States. Britain represented ''monarchy in its worst form," while American superiority in political institutions, scientific knowledge, and moral cultivation led it above and beyond its European counterparts. Indeed, Protestantism combined with constitutional liberty created the American culture which encouraged both material and moral greatness. Cushing thus compared the US to those "nations, distanced by us in the race for wealth and power, who gaze on our marvelous progress with admiration and awe.“125 He felt, however, that Britain did not gaze upon the US as it so deserved, but instead showed marauding contempt and pretentious insolence, continuously inftinging upon US territory and rights. As he declaimed in a speech before the House in May 1838 on the Oregon conflict, "The conduct of Great Britain has, I am compelled to say, been marked by rapacity, illiberality, and gross disregard of our just rights“126 British activity in the Americas, inftinging upon what Cushing saw as American territory, and around the world, attempting to thwart American trade and progress, infuriated Cushing so that "to the end of his days," Fuess writes, "Cushing had a distrust of England and the English." 127

Cushing had begun to nurture an interest in the China trade in the late 1830’s, undoubtedly his constituents, the Massachusetts merchants and traders, influenced their representative and his policy positions. But it also appears that his father, John N. Cushing, had brought the matter to his attention through a series of letters to Cushing from Oregon. "It is destined to be what I have ever told you," his father wrote to him in 1842, "a great country, it can't be otherwise from its nearness to China, Manilla [sic] and all the Islands in the Pacific which are daily becoming of more importance.“128 A merchant who had lost his business during the War of 1812, John N. was attempting to find his way back into the trade through Pacific commerce. Correspondence on the issue between father and son had actually begun sometime in late 1836 or early 1837, with father Cushing imploring Representative Cushing to take up the issue of Oregon before the Congress. Correspondence on the matter continued at least through 1838.129 Within those two years Cushing delivered at least two speeches before the House on "The Subject of the Oregon Territory," and gained a reputation as someone in government who would fight "for the protection of citizens of the US in the territory of Oregon," as the Secretary of the Oregon Provisional Emigration Society remarked 130 Such developments tied Cushing to China, and when, in early 1840, the issue came before the Committee of Foreign Affairs, on which he sat as a ranking member, Cushing began to fervently press his case. On the same day that Congressman Lawrence presented the memorial from the eight American merchants in China (January 9, 1840), Cushing wrote to the Secretary of State to argue the case of opening official relations with China.131 Given that Lawrence and Cushing were both representatives from Massachusetts, we can sunnise that Cushing very probably had previously seen the merchants' letter and that the two Congressmen perhaps even coordinated their petitions.

Not until the following year, however, when Tyler occupied the White House and Webster ran the State Department, did Cushing, with his rampant Anglophobia, wield an unparalleled influence on the China issue through his strong personal friendships with both men. Tyler admired Cushing's vast intellect, and constantly called on him asking for advice and comments on issues on everything from foreign affairs to the postal system in the Northeastern US. Cushing visited the White House frequently to meet with Tyler, often joining him for dinner with other distinguished guests. With Webster, Cushing had an even closer relationship. He would dine at Webster's home at least once a week, and between 1837-1843 Cushing lent Webster upwards of $1 0,000 dollars with no mention of interest or date of repayment.132 Through these intimate relationships with the country's most powerful men, Cushing became integral in the formation of policy, and his views on China resonated with both the Secretary of State and the President For these policy makers the time had come to act; Cushing argued that the United States could no longer passively observe the China trade and hope that its merchants succeed. Now that the British had taken the initiative and gained an advantage in the Far East, the day was coming for a showdown in the Pacific between the old West and the new. "The British government," Cushing wrote to President Tyler on December 27, 1842, "has succeeded in forcing China to admit British vessels into five ports in the Chinese Empire and to cede to England in perpetual sovereignty a commercial depots...[illegible]...on the coast of China." If the US did not act in the Far East, Cushing warned, the British would seize Japan and Hawaii giving them control of the Pacific „to the immense future peril, not only of our territory possessions, but of all our vast commerce on the Pacific." Cushing recommended dispatching a mission to China to negotiate a commercial treaty for the US.133 Three days later, in a special message to Congress, Tyler announced the Pacific Ocean and Hawaii within the US sphere of influence, effectively extending the Monroe Doctrine to the Pacific, and asked Congress for funds for a commissioner to reside in China.134

These developments appeared amidst a crescendo in the rivalry between Britain and the US. In fact, 1842 had almost brought the two sides to war. Tyler's annual message to Congress (today's State of the Union), delivered on December 6, 1842, opened by recoWlting the past year of conflict between Britain and the US, which had "threatened most seriously the public peace." Indeed, the first two and one half pages of the address dealt with ''the question of peace or war between the United States and Great Britain.“135 The previous week of White House correspondence with the Congress further illustrates the tension: on December 23, the Congress was informed of the breakdown of the Treaty of Washington (over the Northeast boWldary conflict) and the reasons which prevented "any agreement upon the subject at present." That same day a State Department report from the minister in London informed the Senate of the British refusal to assume state debts. On December 29, the Congress also received correspondence between the US minister in London and the British government on the conflict over slave trading.

The significance of the British treaty with China was not lost on Washington policymakers. Former Secretary of State, President, and now chainnan of the House Committee of Foreign Affairs, John Quincy Adams took up the cause of pushing for official relations with China. Just months after his meetings with Peter Parker in 1841, for example, he delivered a speech before the Massachusetts Historical Society on the need to press China to allow diplomatic relations. And in the debates following Tyler's request, although he himself stood on the opposite side of the political divide from the president, Adams led the charge against Tyler's political enemies to secure the necessary funds for a mission for the purpose of "providing the means of future intercourse between the United States and the Government of China." 136 The three-hour debate that ensued in the House on February 21, 1843, touched on the absolute economic necessity for the US government to do all in its power to promote and expand trade with China. As Congressman Holmes put it: "The trade of South America and Europe is fixed on an established basis. But, by the opening of intercourse with China, three hundred and twenty millions of people (hitherto shut out from the rest of the world) would be brought within the entire circle of commercial republics." The depression at the end of the l830s weighed heavy on politicians' minds, and constant concern of a commodity glut forced them to think in terms of new and larger overseas markets. They knew very well that this put them in direct competition with Britain; a race, if you will, for the markets of the world. As Holmes articulated that day, "When England is advancing in this matter, and preparing to take to herself the exclusive benefits of the new state of things in China-is it wise for us to stand still until that nation should have arranged the treaties between herself and China, so as to exclude the United States from all advantages whatever.“136

The House approved funds for the mission to China by a vote of ninety-six to fifty-nine, paving the way for a mission that President Tyler termed of great ''magnitude and importance,,138, and Secretary of State Daniel Webster called "a more important mission than ever proceeded from this Country, and more important mission than any other, likely to succeed it, in our day.“139 The details of the preparation for this mission, and the mission itself, have been thoroughly explored elsewhere.14O Here it is important to note two developments: that the mission's most vocal advocate, the British-hating Caleb Cushing, was chosen to lead the mission; and that the nature of the instructions to Cushing, which were composed by himself and Webster, pertained specifically to securing trading rights weighed in relation to Britain. Through an understanding of the Anglo-American rivalry of the day it becomes clear that the US acted first and foremost to counter British influence and the perceived threat of British monopoly of markets in East Asia. Viewed in this way, the emphasis of the mission in Cushing's instructions shows not just the US trying to gain most favored nation status but to actively counter the threat of Great Britain: "A leading object of the mission in which you are now to be engaged is to secure the entry of American ships and cargoes into these ports on terms as favorable as those which are enjoyed by English merchants...It cannot be wrong for you to make known, where not known, that the United States, once a country subject to England, threw off that subjection years ago, asserted its independence, sword in hand, established that independence after a seven years' war, and now meets England upon equal terms upon the ocean and upon the land.“141

Here, in the archival records, the rivalry between Britain and the US shines through as the predominant factor shaping US governmental interest and action in China in the mid nineteenth century. Belying common assumptions of Anglo-American cooperation, the first US mission to China was as much about America's rivalry with Britain as it was about America's maturing trade with China.

 

Anglo-American Ascendance P.1.

Anglo-American Ascendance P.2.

Anglo-American Ascendance P.3: Asia in the New Spatial Order.

Anglo-American Ascendance P.5: The Japan Blockade

Anglo-American Ascendance P.6: Opium War

67 James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (Washington: Govt. print. off., 1896), v. 4, p. 211-214. HouseJournaI27-3, p.122-124; House Document 27-3, no. 35, Fiche 420

68 House Journa127th Congo 311I sess. 31 December 1842, 122-124; House Document 27th Congo 311I sesS. 31 December 1842, no. 35, Fiche 420; Charles Maurice Wiltse and Harold D. Moser, eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Diplomatic Papers V. 1 (Hanover, N.H.: Published for Dartmouth College by the University Press of New England, 1974), 900.; Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers, v. 4, p. 211-214.

69 See Cohen. America's Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations, Fairbank, "American China Policy to 1898: A Misconception.", Fairbank, The United States and China, Alfred Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New York,: Harcourt, 1938), Thomas J. McCormick, China Market; America's Quest for Informal Empire, 1893-1901 (Chicago,: Quadrangle Books, 1967).

70 Fairbank, "American China Policy to 1898: A Misconception. "

71 Te-kong Tong, United States Diplomacy in China. 1844-60 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 3.

72 Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, ix.

73 Ibid., 91-108. Hunt pursues a similar line of reasoning in Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship.

74 Tyler Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia: A Critical Study of the Policy of the United States with Reference to China, Japan and Korea in the 19th Century (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), ix.

75 Ibid.

76 Fairbank, The United States and China, 313.

77 Fairbank, "American China Policy to 1898: A Misconception," 410.

78 Ibid.: 413.

79 Michael Hunt's book on US-China relations in the nineteenth century, The Making 0/ a Special Relationship, deviates slightly from the Dennett-Fairbank thesis of cooperation by positing the US as an independent actor in its economic, political and cultural interaction with China. Although he even gives mention to the sometimes blatant animosity of Americans to the British, he fails to develop this theme and focuses exclusively on the intimate American relations with China.

80 Cohen, America's Response to China: A ErlStory a/Sino-American Relations, 10.

81 Hsu, The &sea/Modern China, 207, 213.

82 Brauer, "The United States and British Imperial Expansion 1815-60," 29.

83 Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 3-69, WiIliamJ. Donahue, "The Caleb Cushing Mission," Modern Asian Studies 16, no. 2 (1982): 193, Foster Rhea Dulles, America in the Pacific; a Century of Expansion (Boston,: Houghton Mifflin, 1932), 11-19, Kenneth Scott Latourette, The History of Early Relations between the United States and China, 1784-1844 (New Haven, Conn.,: Yale University Press, 1917), Reynolds, Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac, 373-385.

84 See Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 7.

85 Latourette, The History of Early Relations between the United States and China, 48.

86 Nortb, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860,26,221.

87 Latourette, The History of Early Relations between the United States and China, Reynolds, Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac, 380.

88 North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860,233.

89 1822 American State Papers: Commerce and Navigation, 2: 637

90 Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 74, Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship, 55, North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860,233.

91 Michael H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983),7-9.

92 J. Wade Caruthers, American Pacific Ocean Trade; Its Impact on Foreign Policy and Continental Expansion, 1784-1860 (New York,: Exposition Press, 1973),20.

93 See Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 45.

94 Latourette, The History of Early Relations between the United States and China, 49-52.

95 Reynolds, Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac, 384.

96 Debates in the Congress on whether or not to approve funds for the Cushing Mission highlight this concern. See Congo Globe. 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., 323-325 (Feb. 21, 1843); Appendix to the Cong. Globe. 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., 162-165, 198-203 (Feb. 1843).

97 Tyler to House, Dee 30, 1842, House Document 35:27-3, enclosure.

98 Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 59.

99 Latourette, The History of Early Relations between the United States and China, 25.

100 Mr. Wilcoks to Mr. Adams. Canton, Sept. 22, 1817, enclosed in House Documents 26th Cong., 2nd sess., no. 71, p. 7, fiche 383.

101 For full account see Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship, 1-2.

102 See Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 62-64, Eldon Griffin, Clippers and Consuls; American Consular and Commercial Relations with Eastern Asia, 1845-1860 (Ann Arbor, Mich.,: Edwards brothers, inc., 1938).

103 Daniel Stansbury, et. aI. to the President of the United States, Nov. 14,1807, enclosed inHouse Documents 26th Cong., 2nd sess., no. 71. p. 7, fiche 383.

104 Reynolds, Voyage o/the United States Frigate Potomac, 384-385.

105 Quoted in David Gedalecia, "Letters from the Middle Kingdom: The Origins of America's China Policy," Prologue 34, no. 4 (2002): 265.

106 See Ibid.

107 Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers, v. 2, p. 551.

108 House Documents 26th Cong., 2nd sess., no. 71, fiche 383. 109 Congressional Globe 26th Cong., 1St sess., 275.

110 House Document 26111 Cong., 1 st sess., no. 40, Fiche 364.

111 House Document 26111 Cong., 1 st sess., no. 170, Fiche 366.

112 House Journal 26th Cong., 1st seSS., 189; Congressional Globe 26111 Cong., 1st sess., 109; House Document 26th Cong., 1 St sess., no. 40, Fiche 364.

113 House Journal26tb Cong., 1 st sess., 781.

114 Cushing to Foryth, Jan. 9,1840. Cushing Papers, box 21.

115 House Journal 26th Cong., 1 st sess., 368.

116 Charles Maurice Wiltse and Harold D. Moser, eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Correspondence V. 5, 14 vols. (Hanover, N.H.: Published for Dartmouth College by the University Press of New England, 1974),219.

117 Wiltse and Moser, eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Diplomatic Papers V. 1,885.

118 John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874), v. 11, p. 167.

119 Cushing to Tyler, Dec. 27, 1842 Cushing Papers Box 35.

120 See John Belohlavek, "Race, Progress and Destiny: Caleb Cushing," in Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism, ed. Robert Walter Johannsen, Sam W. Haynes, and Christopher Morris (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 22-23.

121 "Claims of Citizens of the United States on Denmark" (1826) p. 16 Cushing Papers box 200.

122 Adams and Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, v. II, p. 37.

123 Claude Moore Fuess, The Life of Caleb Cushing (New York: Harcourt, 1923), 113.

124 Speech on Treaty with Great Britain, Aug. 26, 1842, Cushing Papers box 205.

125 See Belohlavek, "Race, Progress and Destiny: Caleb Cushing," 24-25.

126 "The Subject of the Oregon Territory" May 17, 22, 1838 p.5 Cushing Papers box 204.

127 Fuess, The Life of Caleb Cushing, 12-13,66-67.

128 John N. Cushing to Caleb Cushing, Nov. 13, 1842, Cushing Papers box 34.

129 Caleb Cushing to John N. Cushing, Feb. 2, 1837, Cushing Papers box 14; John N. Cushing to Caleb Cushing, Dec. 20, 1838, Cushing Papers box 18.

130 F.P. Tracy to Caleb Cushing, Dec. 19, 1838, Cushing Papers box 18.

131 Cushing to Foryth, Jan. 9,1840, Cushing Papers box 21

132 Fuess, The Life of Caleb Cushing, 397-398.

133 Cushing to Tyler, Dec. 27, 1842, Cushing Papers box 35.

134 House Journal. 27th Cong., 3n1 sess., 22-124; House Documents 27th Cong., 3n1 sess., no. 35, Fiche 420; Richardson. ed., Messages and Papers, v. 4, p. 211-214.

135 Ibid., v. 4, p. 194-196,210-211.

136 House Document 27th Cong., 311I sess., no.93, Fiche 426; House JOUT7Ul127th Cong., 311I sess., 419-420; see also Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 106-107.

137 Congressional Globe 27th Cong., 3rd sess., 325

138 Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers, v. 4, p. 21l-214.HouseJournaI27-3, p.122-124; House Document 27-3, no. 35, Fiche 420.

139 House Journal 27'b Congo 3rd sess. 31 December 1842, 122-124; House Document 27th Congo 3rd sesS. 31 December 1842, no. 35, Fiche 420; Wiltse and Moser, eds.. The Papers of Daniel Webster: Diplomatic Papers V. 1. 900.; Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers, V. 4, p. 211-214.

140 Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 128-171, Donahue, "The Caleb Cushing Mission.", Kenneth Shewmaker, "Forging the 'Great Chain': Origin of Us Foreign Policy in East Asia," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 129, no. 3 (1985).

141 Senate Document 28th Cong., 2nd sess., no.138, Fiche 457; Wiltse and Moser, eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Diplomatic Papers V. I, v. 6, p. 467-469.

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