The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy.(Review)

Business History, April, 1999 by Samson, Jane

JACQUES M. DOWNS, (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 1997. Pp.495; illus.; map: tables; index. H/back ISBN 0 934223 35 1, [pounds]55).

Peter Ward Fay's foreword to this book tells us that it is a labour of love: the product of many years' research in records that Downs often unearthed or catalogued himself. But the book is no mere chronicle of the rise and fall of Canton firms. It also explores the social and political context of the early American China trade, and confronts the moral dilemmas of the opium traffic. Some American businessmen sponsored missionaries while forging East India Company markings for their tea chests, and making large profits, both directly and indirectly, on opium smuggling. This book is exactly...

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