The paper history of things – described by travellers, enumerated in manifests, toll registers, household inventories, and lush descriptions of ceremony and ritual – tells one part of the story. The physical presence of surviving artefacts in modern collections reveal another dimension. When combined with their artistic representation and undergirded by an understanding of economic value and exchange, our material microhistories no longer look particularly small or simple.1
This chapter looks at a neglected but important aspect of Europe’s early commercial relations with China: the privilege trade of the maritime elite. It approaches the economic, social and artistic mechanisms of exchange that shaped the movement of Chinese export goods in the early decades of the eighteenth century from the perspective of the traders themselves, rather than the Companies. Further, it advances a set of related arguments about this particular branch of commercial transactions. It demonstrates that the private trade with China was greater and more significant than previously understood. It also argues that the privilege trade was a crucial vector through which special, peculiar and novel Chinese goods and fashion styles arrived in Europe. The ‘fashion element’ was especially pronounced in the case of private commissions – when commanders and supercargoes received purchase orders from individual European consumers for customised goods, such as a specific Chinese silk, a particular type of shoe, a miniature model of an East Indies ship carved from ivory or a porcelain portrait figure. These small private commissions stand at the heart of this chapter. Where the merchandise survived the journey to Europe in good condition, it provided a nice profit for
The present chapter furthermore demonstrates that the privilege trade of commanders, supercargoes and captains was not only a way to make a profit, but that it also presented an important asset that members of the maritime elite effectively used in different ways and for various purposes. For one thing, many commanders and supercargoes were pioneering consumers of Chinese goods themselves. Their own appetite for conspicuous consumption and display of fashionable Chinese goods could be satisfied through their own privilege trade. This turned them into significant arbiters of taste, who through their own lifestyle attracted European clients to the peculiar allure of goods from the East. Yet, the privilege trade also allowed merchant mariners to nurture their family ties and friendly connections across Europe. They did so through extensive gift giving of Chinese-made objects. In this case, the imported goods of the privilege trade were emotionally charged, intended, as they were, to sustain wider kinship and commercial networks and to keep the memory of these extremely mobile merchants alive among their scattered circles of confidants and associates. By studying these private gifts and commissions, historians can get a glimpse of the wishes and expectations that wider family members of China traders, and their larger groups of friends, had with respect to this new and exotic trade.
In addition to this personalised function of gift giving to friends and kin, the privilege trade also allowed merchant mariners to strategically lubricate their relations with powerful East India Company directors. The latter were avid consumers of Chinese luxuries, too, and, as this chapter reveals, personally commissioned these goods from members of the maritime elite. But beyond that, the privilege trade also provided a special, private space on board that could be used flexibly for other services and favours. For instance, supercargoes and commanders regularly received enquiries from friends stationed across the East Indies to transport their special cargo in their private cabin to Europe, precisely because this offered a specially protected realm during the voyage. The privilege trade thus fulfilled myriad and important functions in the early China trade. Its services ranged from a way of making a guaranteed profit through custom-made private commissions to lubricating family and strategic
The private trade in Chinese consumer goods rarely respected national-political boundaries. Depending on their personal networks and social aspirations, merchant mariners managed to build up client bases in Britain and on the continent. These encompassed members of the aristocracy, but also wholesalers and specialist dealers in Chinese goods, in addition to members of extended business and kin networks. Canton traders were necessarily engaged in a dialogue with all these groups, in order to be able to respond quickly to changes in demand. Precisely how the privilege trade and private commission could become an important vehicle for attracting new consumers to the burgeoning trade with the Middle Kingdom requires an exploration of the very processes through which such orders could be placed.
This chapter is, first, dedicated to the definition and explanation of different types of commissions within the private trade in Chinese customised consumer goods during the first half of the eighteenth century. It offers a typology that reflects the different people involved in both small-scale and large-scale commissions. The chapter will then move on to explore the ways in which commanders and supercargoes managed their private commission business. The aim is to demonstrate that, contrary to misperceived notions, merchant mariners acted as both key consumers and distributors of Chinese export wares, thus bridging the gap between maritime and sedentary actor categories and historiographies. Third, by looking at private-trade goods in detail – their design and the ways in which they were packed and stored aboard Company ships – I suggest a reinterpretation of the motives and concerns by which goods were chosen for markets to Europe. I argue that a rich literature concerned with the decoration and quality of Chinese export art has hitherto ignored the fact that the shape of export art was functional to the point that we can speak of a trade in containers. The design of trade goods and the choosing of goods by individual traders were subject to the tyranny of space (or rather a lack thereof). The pragmatics of shipping and handling, and how they impacted on artisanal skill and consumer choice, will be explored in this chapter by tracing the design principles of the Canton trade: the square box, the flat-pack and the rectangular chest.
Every East India Company supercargo and commander, down to the petty officers, enjoyed some officially assigned cargo space on board Company ships to engage in private trade. Those further up the hierarchy could call a cabin their own; a small room they inhabited for many months whilst travelling back
1 Chinese Export Wares and the Market for Private Commissions
The more recent works on Chinese export wares such as porcelain, silk textiles, wallpaper,2 rosewood furniture, watercolour paintings and lacquerware acknowledge the decisive role that private-trade played in providing a gateway through which fine-quality wares, souvenirs and customised pieces entered European markets – yet the intricacies of the so-called commission trade remain a puzzle for most scholars.3 The most substantial literature on private-trade goods exists for Chinese export porcelain, and a small number of these studies focus exclusively on commissioned wares – the so-called chine de commande.4 The object-based research of art historians has led to the identification of a chronology of styles and techniques in pottery and painting that were in use during the period of this study. In the past few years research has been conducted on other types of private-trade goods that places this connoisseurial subject of Chinese export wares within wider historical debates about the emergence of a global material culture backed by long-distance trade.5 Museum collections of Chinese export porcelain and furniture in Europe and the United States sometimes allow researchers to link increasing numbers of individual objects to their first owners and to grasp elements of the ‘social life’ of these objects as commission goods, gifts and memorabilia.6
In the British case, Chinese and Japanese lacquerware in the form of panels, picture frames, folding screens, trunks, tea trays, bookcases and cabinets, tables and other costly items of household furniture was from the 1720s onwards purchased exclusively on private account.11 Within the smaller East India Companies, namely the Ostend and Swedish ventures, furniture and lacquerware was solely imported via private trade. This was equally true for other
The fact that private traders imported cheaper wares alongside extravagant luxuries instead hints at the composite nature of the private trader’s commercial strategies and portfolio. If we look at the aggregate shopping lists, private-trade declarations and ledgers of individual traders, it becomes clear that commissions made up only a part of the overall portfolio of goods purchased by individual traders during their trips to China. The pacotille of captains and supercargoes typically included various small-scale commissions (for which a fee was charged) and the fulfilment of large orders for individuals and wholesalers. In addition, depending on their special expertise and distribution networks, traders invested independently in specific commodities such as rice, Chinese rhubarb, silk textiles or different types of tea. With a keen eye on developments in fashion, they equally sought out novelties in design or craftsmanship. Our British interlopers in Ostend and Gothenburg were more inclined to specialise in goods that found wider markets across continental Europe and North Britain, as the home markets in Sweden and the Austrian Netherlands were growing, but not at the same rate as the trade expanded.13 Local contacts with individual merchants and consumers were, however cherished by foreigners such as Charles Irvine, and continued to lead to special commissions – from ready-made fans and waistcoats to customised furniture and plates.
But why did traders accept special commissions in the first place? On the most basic level, commissions represented a relatively secure source of profit and could thus contribute to reducing the overall commercial risks involved in maritime shipping. Sometimes a maximum price was agreed upon accepting
One telling example of a captain who grossly disregarded the official regulations of the English Company is the case of Captain Francis Nelly, commander of the English East Indiaman Hartford and an acquaintance of Colin Campbell, Thomas Hall and Charles Pike, who died in Canton shortly before the English ship could embark on its return journey in 1731/32.14 Nelly’s pacotille was subsequently auctioned off at the autumn sales at London’s India House for the benefit of his creditors and heirs.15 The chance survival of an eic auction catalogue of 1732 – which was submitted as evidence in a lawsuit – provides us with the opportunity to look at Nelly’s investments more closely.16
The annotated auction catalogue includes the price estimates of the textiles that were put up for sale on behalf of Francis Nelly. In total 158 lots of textiles were sold on his account, and the total of the reserve prices was in the region of £10,000.17 Yet, wrought silks made up only one part of Nelly’s investment. Table 4 shows the types and amount of China goods Nelly had registered as ‘privilege trade’ in 1731 with the Canton supercargoes who had noted the details in their ‘diary & transaction book’.18 It shows that the 158 lots of textiles
Captain Francis Nelly’s private trade on the Hartford (1730/32)
Chinaware |
125 chests and boxes |
Chinaware |
1,095 bundles |
Tea |
58 small chests |
Tea |
118 tubs |
Silks |
30 chests |
Coarse cloth |
1,225 bundles |
Lacquered ware |
10 chests |
Arrack |
15 butts |
Fans |
2 boxes |
[w]e are encouraged to demand so large Quantity of Silks, by the Prices they are now at in Foreign parts, and we make no doubt of their turning to good account if you are careful to procure such as are perfectly well manufactured, agreeable to the following Directions with respect to the Colours, and at or about the usual Process [id est: prices] as specified in the Computation.21
It is more likely, however, that Nelly had bought at least part of the silks on commission for a group of shopkeepers or wholesale merchants, on whose orders, expertise and market projections private traders and Company directors equally relied.22 Upon gaining a post for a journey, supercargoes soon informed the members of their networks and asked if they could be of any service – thereby indicating that they were open to receiving advice, orders or loans. As the example of Nelly illustrates, the composition of the private cargo that individual traders assembled for the European market can at times be pieced together by using both Company records and private notes or ledgers. The volume of capital involved is at odds with previously held assumptions that the privilege trade (which includes the commission business) of private individuals in the first half of the eighteenth century was always niche, small scale and confined to the purchase of unusual and luxurious products.23
2 Typology of Commissioners in the China Trade
The business ventures of captains and supercargoes thus ranged from small-scale commissions to the fulfilment of large orders for individuals and wholesalers and speculative purchases on a single voyage – a kaleidoscope of activities that calls for a structured analysis with regard to the different types of markets and buyers involved. I propose to differentiate between four different types of commissioners. In doing so, it is crucial to account for change over time, since access to Chinese wares greatly increased in the middle decades of
An important characteristic of such commissions was that they were part and parcel of the dense patronage networks that evolved around the East India trade. The appearance of private commissions in the notebooks and letters of Canton traders provides us with a glimpse into the ‘affective and strategic uses’ that Chinese objects had in a trading world so heavily reliant on the logic of mutual obligation.26 Before the mid-eighteenth century, private commissions were not offered to strangers. Instead, they contributed to the cementing of marriage alliances, memories, friendships and commercial partnerships of those intimately connected to the trade.
Commissions were also accepted from friends stationed in one of the trading factories on the subcontinent. John Searle, supercargo in the English China trade between 1758 and 1765, scribbled in his notebook the commissions that had reached him by letter from friends and colleagues there, who requested either things from China such as ‘a Pair of Backgammon Tables neatly made in China for William Mills Esq’, or indeed from Britain, as he was returning there. Amongst those special commissions to be send to India ‘by the first Ship after my Arrival were 20 to 30 of the Newest and Genteelest Patterns drawn on Paper for Chintz paintings, the best that can be had for Mr. Stratton’.27 They were the emotive and social currency among fellow traders and helped to maintain and expand commercial and familial networks over large distances. Private commissions, together with gifts, favours and customised memorabilia, formed part of a ‘fluid register of exchange’ that underpinned the development of the trade in Chinese goods and, as the example of the commission of patterns demonstrates, the dependence of innovation on personal delivery.28
In order to analyse this branch of private commissions, we can rely on evidence in the form of mercantile correspondence, account books, probate
The second group of commissioners started to appear more frequently from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, and encompassed the upper middle classes, the lower gentry and aristocratic circles.29 Special commissions from China became fashionable among these elite social groups partly through the influence of East India Company servants. The class of merchant mariners who plied the seas from the West Indies to China, Batavia and Calcutta were part of a new mercantile elite that became ever more powerful in the urban centres of commerce, in politics and, lastly, in the polite circles of Europe. The fact that these newly rich ‘seamen’ gradually mixed and mingled with the gentry (and sometimes even with the high aristocracy, as well as artists and artisans) had tangible effects on patterns of consumption in Europe.30
On New Year’s Day was launch[ed] from Messrs Wells’s deck in Deptford, a fine ship for the service of the Hon. East India Company called the
British King to be commanded by Captain Peter Pigou. After the launch the Captain gave at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand an elegant entertainment and a ball to a brilliant assembly of near two hundred ladies and gentlemen of distinction.31
Such lavish events in a London coffeehouse were perfect opportunities for attracting private commissions from ‘ladies and gentlemen of distinction’ that would otherwise have to buy ready-made wares from the shops that specialised in merchandise from China. The ball mentioned above took place shortly after Peter Pigou (1732–1783) had been appointed master of this new ship. Pigou himself came from an extremely wealthy East India Company family, with two of his brothers being active supercargoes in China and his father Frederick Pigou (1711–1792) serving as a powerful director of the eic in London. Before Pigou senior was appointed to the Court of Directors, a position that he held almost continuously between 1758 and 1777, he had been chief supercargo on several voyages to China himself. His personal instructions on how to distinguish the different qualities of Chinese silks were presented to many supercargoes that went out to Canton under his patronage, and reflect an intimate knowledge of the demands for China goods in Europe.32 This asset could be passed down the family line to a new generation of China traders, such as to Peter Pigou.33 As the episode with the London ball clearly demonstrates, the latter was well acquainted with the established – but also with the newly emerging – conventions and ‘tricks’ of China supercargoes who were eager to attract ever-greater circles of buyers for special commission goods. However, Pigou might have taken on too many commissions, for he was dismissed in 1765. The Court of Directors discovered that on his return journey from China, ‘Capt. Pigou of the British King’ and three of his officers had disposed ‘of large quantities of their private trade at Lisbon, where the said ship touched to have the main mast repaired’.34
We can perceive a further widening of the market for special commissions when corporations, Masonic lodges, guilds and companies discovered the
The last of the four groups of private commissioners outlined here is probably the one that has been the most inconspicuous in existing scholarship. Nevertheless, as I would argue, it was in many respects the most influential with regard to market developments. From the early eighteenth century onwards, wholesalers and retailers (such as mercers) sought to get hold of the best wares from China, commodities in which they dealt in bulk in Europe. Soon, they understood that access to the pacotille of merchant mariners was the best way to get new products, new patterns and better qualities. The large-scale commissions that were organised in partnership between wholesalers and mariners are treated in depth in Chapter 2 but are listed here since they represented another key type of commissioners.
3 Families and Consumers Associated with the East India Companies
As Howard has found in his pioneering study of private trade in porcelain, ‘[i]n England a comparatively small circle of families, related by blood or background, succeeded both in directing what became the largest company in the world and at the same time in acquiring much of the porcelain that survives
Dutch merchants might well have started the fashion for armorial wares as items of regular trade, since most of the very early examples were made for Dutch families. Here, the overall trend is similar to what happened in Britain and France: we see an extraordinarily high proportion of commissions from voc servants and financiers.41 The Dutch trade emporium in Asia was Batavia. From early on it was exposed to a wide variety of Chinese export goods, as Chinese merchants and adventurers visited the port regularly.42 Individual Company officials assembled vast collections of Chinese goods during their stay in Asia and commissioned, in some case, excessive numbers of porcelain sets, many of which would have been difficult to sell on because of their customised design. Jan Albert Sichterman, rightly called a Dutch nabob, who had served the voc at its Asian headquarters in Batavia in the early decades of the eighteenth century before rising to become Dutch Governor of Bengal, owned ‘ten tableservices, each of more than hundred pieces, and … 41 complete tea services’, many of which were decorated with the family crest, a squirrel.43
Clearly, armorial wares helped this new mercantile elite in northwestern Europe to render visible their access to powerful ordering networks of what was at the beginning of the eighteenth century still a fairly exclusive trade. In his excellent study on the influences of Chinese porcelain on Southeast Asia, Japan, the Middle East and Europe, Robert Finlay describes the slow beginning of the porcelain trade through Portuguese and Spanish merchants, who
In order to commission a set of ‘family china’, painted wallpapers or embroidered or hand-painted silks for curtains and bed hangings, it was necessary to approach supercargoes and commanders of East Indiamen directly. This is mainly due to the fact that private commissions typically involved the exchange of written instructions, miniature models, patterns of fabric, portraits, drawings or sketches of the design. A coloured drawing (or engraved book plate) featuring the armorial bearings, crest and Latin motto of the family, would have been provided as a model for the production of customised porcelain.46
shewn the different processes used in finishing the China ware. In one long gallery, we found upwards of a hundred persons at work in sketching or finishing the various ornaments upon each particular piece of ware, some parts being executed by men of a very advanced age, and others by children even so young as six or seven years.49
Given their evident uselessness as respectable objects of display and self-fashioning, it is not surprising that very few of such curious pieces survive in museums and private collections today.
Despite this particular failure, the example of the merchant Bewicke’s ordering of his family service clearly shows how this commission business of Chinese export wares actually worked for the European consumer. The exchange of drawings and models suggests that buyers were directly involved in the process that led to the production of customised goods in China. In this context, small-scale commissions reflect the active pursuit of consumers and merchant seamen of novelties in an otherwise increasingly standardised trade.50 The value of analysing special commissions therefore lies partly in the possibility of uncovering the numerous, but forgotten, acts of innovation in eighteenth-century consumption.
One example of such innovation was the way in which design motifs travelled from one form of object to another, producing a pleasing unity in interior decoration.51 In fact, drawings of armorial bearings, floral bouquets and allegorical figures were sometimes given not only to one, but to different artisans and shopkeepers in order procure a range of customised goods of the same style. Coats of arms were not only placed on porcelain. Sir Francis Child the Younger, an appointed director of the eic between 1721 and 1732, who served in different committees relevant to the commission process, namely the committee that oversaw private trade and the committee of warehouses,52 furnished
These objects were not obtained in a free-market setting; members of the Child family were major eic investors and served as directors: it was entirely through their intimate connection to Company infrastructures and personnel that these objects could be purchased. By analysing the potential private traders who could have furnished these items to Sir Francis Child, we can gain a better understanding of the role that patronage and power relations played for the commission trade. Child’s special orders were delivered shortly after their arrival in Britain and were most likely never advertised at the eic auction.55 This privileged access to lacquer of exceptionally high quality and in quantity was reserved for those high up in the Company hierarchy.56
One of six lacquered hall chairs, part of a larger armorial set of 16 items with the Child coat of arms, on display at Osterley.
© the national trust of England, Osterley Park and House
Between the early 1720s and 1732, the period in which all of Sir Francis Child’s items were purchased, there were very few eic servants who declared importing greater quantities of lacquerware as part of their private trade. A certain Captain Robert Hudson appears to be the most likely candidate for such a large and prestigious commission. He was experienced in the China trade and could thus provide the necessary contacts to hong merchants, shopkeepers and artisans in Canton. Moreover, he was part of a well-connected family of ship owners and Company servants. Good relations within the Company’s Court of Directors were essential for the career of any merchant seaman, since all appointments to East Indiamen, and all allocations to voyages, had to be ultimately approved by the Court.57 Hudson seemed to have been indeed well positioned within these powerful circles, since in 1726–1728, he was able to secure the position of the first officer for his brother Charles on the Prince Augustus (his brother would later become a commander himself).58 The directors of the Company usually acted as patrons for certain supercargoes and ships’ officers.
Model in ivory of a Chinese pleasure barge, mid-eighteenth century, Chinese export
© the national trust of england, Osterley Park and House
The commercial ledgers of the eic contain details about the private trade of high-ranking crew members on many voyages to China. Through these
Although commanders and supercargoes of the China trade all belonged to the European maritime elite and were bound together by a strong group identity often strengthened by family ties, key differences in upbringing, education and social comportment still have to be taken into account when we look at them as commission agents. Not every commander was likely to be trusted with a commission of the calibre of Sir Francis Child’s lacquered furniture. On the contrary, contemporaries often commented on those representatives of the maritime elite whom nobody would have liked to have at their own ball or tea party – and hence would probably not have trusted for choosing the right silk fabrics, vases or furniture for their elegant homes.62
Some merchant mariners were indeed ill-mannered or untrustworthy, others dangerously short-tempered and quite a few were known drunkards. Eliza Fay, who wrote a widely read travel journal later in the century, rightly commented on what many passengers must have thought when they witnessed the uncouth behaviour exhibited by some Company commanders. Captain John Lewis, an eic commander in the 1770s and 1780s, ‘appears to be an excellent seaman, but the roughest being surely that nature ever formed, in language and manners. The oaths he swears by are most horrible and he prides himself in inventing new ones.’63 Colin Campbell confirmed that ‘many Captains of ships … huff & strut & bounce & curse & swear upon Decks’, so as to increase
Friendships between commanders, supercargoes and lower-ranking officers cut across national boundaries and the established vertical hierarchies on board.66 Yet, social rank and individual comportment were key elements for the formation of friendships and had, in the end, a considerable impact on who was participating in joint transactions and who was not. For Charles Irvine and Colin Campbell, piety, modesty and honour were key markers of an individual’s character.67 Like him, there were many supercargoes and some commanders, too, who behaved like gentlemen and who made no secret of their disgust with the base behaviour and bawdy atmosphere on board East India ships. In Europe, they mingled in circles of learned men and the landed elite and as such they were more likely to receive prestigious orders for armorial porcelain, custom-made wallpaper and other personalised items of display. Thus, the social connections and their place within polite society in Europe of supercargoes and navigating officers played a paramount role for their success in the special commission business, which was by definition a very personal matter.68
Unfortunately, very few China traders kept separate records of private commissions which would allow us to distinguish clearly between the goods brought by them for sale at the regular auctions, objects that were brought home as a trial, as presents, for their own consumption or indeed as special commissions. Instead, private orders were noted randomly in small notebooks,
Special commissions taken on by Charles Irvine in 1745 on board the Calmar. ‘Invoice of Pacotil[le] on the Calmar’, January 1745. Shipping Documents, Box 11, Folder 1742–1745, Irvine Papers, fbl.
Figure 8 is symptomatic of the ways in which special commissions were noted down in merchants’ private records. The packaging often carried the initials of its owner, indicating that these goods were already taken. Intriguingly, the extract from the invoice of Irvine’s pacotille is the only piece of evidence that there is about Irvine’s own love life. From Canton, he brought ‘1 Tea Sett directed Palpetski’ with the remark added ‘tis my Lady [who] bespoke it’.69 Strangely enough, none of Irvine’s letters ever mentioned this woman companion. The China ink for Governor Ancarcrona, by contrast, was a routine commission, since the governor asked for ink every time Irvine went out to China. And so were the ‘7 canisters of Souchon’ purchased on behalf of the seic director Hugh Campbell.70
By means of a semantic shift, Canton traders managed to provide members of their personal networks with items that would have otherwise been reserved for the very rich. In the memorandum books of the eic, in which supercargoes and commanders noted down their private trade, usually in as little detail as possible, individual objects and packages are singled out and described as ‘commission’, ‘for personal use’, ‘present’ or ‘gift’ to conceal the market value of a specific imported object. Supercargoes and other private traders were indeed careful to stress the personal nature of parts of their cargo in order to signal that these goods were not intended to be sold to the highest bidder. Thus, rhetorically, special commissions were taken out of the cadre of mere commodities. Instead, they were declared to be tokens of friendship for their families, patrons and friends. Special commissions became a loophole for the distribution of customised goods, but also a gateway to secure more ordinary goods of especially fine quality for specific individuals, such as the ‘24 Musters fine Tea for Mistress C. Campbell’.73 The special privilege of Canton traders lay not only in being able to access goods in China directly, but in directing them to specific consumers – from China with love.
In many instances, however, it is exceedingly difficult to tell which private-trade goods were commissions and which were not. In a journal kept between 1724 and 1726, Thomas Hall noted down some particulars about the owners and prices of the goods that he had privately imported from China (Table 5). Individuals of the Belgian nobility had asked him to purchase smaller items. The Duchess of d’Arenberg (an Italian princess by birth) spent over £300 on eleven pieces of Chinese silk fabric, and the Marquis of Campo, a Spanish
Purchasers of Thomas Hall’s pacotille in Aug. and Sept. 1724a
Name of buyer |
Articles |
Price in £ |
Arranged by |
|---|---|---|---|
Madame Duchess d’Arenberg |
7ps pequins |
175 |
Mr J. Worth |
3 ps gorgorons |
120 |
Mr J. Worth |
|
1 ps damask |
46 |
Mr J. Worth |
|
Marquis de Campo for his wife |
3 ps damask |
138 |
Mr J. Worth |
Josefa Arcadia Rodríguez |
1 chest Hyson tea |
292 |
Louis Baernert |
Christian F. de Steiner |
Snuffbox and sword case |
39 |
|
Embroidered satin |
108 |
||
Widow of J. Van Colthen |
Chinaware |
4160 |
|
Anon. |
6 lots damasks à 10 ps |
John Butler |
|
Anon. |
Colour/gold plates |
2418 |
John Butler |
Captain Peter Jackson |
Charts |
304 |
|
Jacobus Maelcamp |
Saffron |
4 |
|
Total |
7804 |
While we need more research on the precise mechanisms of the special commission trade conducted through commanders and supercargoes, we also
4 Commanders and Supercargoes as Consumers, Suppliers and Entrepreneurs
Soon after official appointments were made for a journey to the East, the correspondence of British supercargoes and commanders regularly shows a sudden rise of letters containing informal ‘wish lists’ – which were usually given by a number of relatives, business associates and former colleagues. For instance, on 17 March 1740, Hugh Campbell, a director of the Swedish East India Company, former free merchant in the intra-Asian trade and friend of Charles Irvine, gave his last-minute orders when Irvine was about to embark on the Ridderhuys to China. In exchange for Campbell’s £40.17s, in gold that Irvine would still need to turn into silver at Cadiz at a favourable exchange, he was asked to bring for ‘Mrs Campbell a [piece] of Embroidery upon the finest dark coloured Satin olive or brown of a fine large running pattern with worsted Silk’.77 For his daughter Campbell ordered ‘a piece of Embroidery on whatever yellow Satin’ with a ‘handsome … but not a very large Pattern’. Probably intended to be used as presents were the ‘50 catts best Souchong’, cattees, ‘20 ditto best Peckoe’ and ‘20 ditto best Hoysan: putt up in handsome pott’ that he commissioned from his friend.78 By contrast, ‘A complete tea service with Coffee pott, slop basin of enamelled copper’ as well as ‘A barber’s basin and bottle of ditto’ might well have been commissioned for use in his own household. A slop basin was part of a tea or coffee service into which tea and coffee
This last order is especially interesting and tells us much about the fact that British interlopers were among the first who owned and displayed such new fancies from China. Reverse mirror paintings from China became highly fashionable in the second half of the eighteenth century. Elaborate gilded frames in rococo taste then usually replaced the original wooden frames.80 The mirror in its original frame depicted in Figure 9 shows an early example of such a ‘painted looking-glass’ in European design. In 1739, Charles Irvine mentions for the first time that he had brought from China on the Fredericus Rex Suecia ‘20 small boxes of painted glass and chinaware’.81 Unfortunately, we have no certain knowledge about the two pairs of paintings that Hugh Campbell commissioned in 1740, which was very early and suggests that merchants associated with the East Indies trade could indeed act as trendsetters for new luxuries from China. But is there a promising trace? Thierry Audric, the author of the first comprehensive study on Canton reverse mirror paintings, at least suggests that the subject of a portrait in a private collection, known as Unidentified Englishman in a Landscape, strongly resembles Colin Campbell.82 For all the good reasons he gives, this might actually be him, but it could also be his brother, Hugh Campbell, who was an seic director, too, and who commissioned two pairs of paintings according to a model he handed over to Irvine, who was a trusted family friend.
A Chinese export reverse mirror painting, c. 1750, in original hardwood and gilded Chinese frame. Height (with frame) 72.5 cm; width 59.7cm. Decorated with leaves, butterflies and two squirrels eating grapes or nuts
© jeremy ltd
Try if you can get at Cadiz a few of the small Essence bottles that come from Italy, & buy for my account a dozen of them (or two dozen if not too dear) to be distributed between Suqua, Tan Chinqua & Manuel as presents from me, also if you can get 3 small pots of Portuguese snuff of which one also to each of them.83
This exchange of gifts was attended by the closure of accounts between Suqua and Campbell. His instructions to Irvine show that private commissions were not only organised from Europe to China, but apparently also the other way around. Hence, we learn that Irvine was asked to bring Suqua the sales revenue of 4,599 Mexican dollars ‘of the Silks & Chinaware I brought & sold here for him’. In addition, he was asked to bring ‘my enclosed letter, letting him know at [the] same time that I do not charge him commission or any other charge for my trouble, but have served him for nothing as I promised him’.84 This instance, then, reveals not only that personal relations between Western merchants and Chinese wholesalers at Canton were much more intimate than the traditional historiography of the Canton trade suggests.85 It also reminds us that supercargoes and commanders acted as mediators for a profitable trade in both directions, and that wealthy merchants from China clearly saw the potential of European markets for their products. Small-scale commissions lay very much at the heart of that trade, especially because they brought together more closely the buyers and suppliers of goods over such vast distances.
As this written evidence makes clear, the correspondence between maritime merchants reveals unique details about the nature of private commissions, the people involved and the practicalities of ordering customised goods. Through the survival of merchant letters, we learn among other things that special commissions sometimes required the repeated exchange of materials, drawings and instructions before an object could actually be made in China. To take one example, Colin Campbell wrote to his friend Charles Irvine that
We know that Colin Campbell owned, in fact, a substantial collection of Chinese export wares. His last will and testament (annotated and published in 1960) gives us a taste of the objects that he acquired both personally and through private commissions. He bequeathed a number of items to the young wife of Niklas Sahlgren, who was not only a close friend of Colin Campbell, but acted also as a fellow director of the Swedish East India Company from early on. Of his generous gifts, Campbell wrote that, ‘Out of Friendship and real Esteem that I have always had for Mrs. Catharina Christina Sahlgren, alias Grupp (second wife), I desire her to accept of my large Lacquered Chest, or Chest of Drawers, with all my China, Pictures on Glass, and my Emerald Ring that Her Majesty the present Queen of Sweden did me the Honour to present me.’88 This not only shows how esteemed the British interloper Colin Campbell had become through his services to the seic, but also that these interlopers could possess extraordinarily valuable items for their private spaces.
I send twenty yards of Muslin with a drawing of a Barley lheaf [sic], I should wish the fag [remnant] cut off and it worked, one blade in silver the middle of a shining kind and the rest Silver thread. [T]he other blade that crosses it, green silk … worked in the fag and sent to me as patterns with the price of doing the 20 yards.90
Among various other commissions for herself, including ‘1 Sett large Jarrs’, teaboxes, sugar dishes in filigree style, ‘some slight taffetas’, ‘3 pieces winter silk’, another black and two grey silks, ‘some pelongs’, Mrs Lawson also promised to ‘send a shoe a size larger I should wish them as they shrink’. She furthermore added that ‘the same size of the pattern shoe will also do for Mrs MacLellan but I beg she may not get the Europe[an] heels’.91 Mrs Lawson not only provided written instructions on how she wished things to be made but also referred to a range of numbered drawings (unfortunately lost) for the many different sets of porcelain and furniture damasks that her customers expected her to procure, noting already the initials with which the chests should be marked.
From the detailed descriptions of the commissions we can appreciate just how much influence on the precise decoration a consumer could have when procuring a unique token from China. Of course, some consumers were less discriminatory, and so Mrs Lawson wrote to her husband that all ‘things very pretty and very cheap would be acceptable to Mrs. Mae’.92 This direct involvement of women in the collection, preparation and arrangements of payments for special commissions is only surprising at first sight. In fact, many of the supercargoes and commanders worked in close collaboration with their wives and female relatives. In mercantile correspondence, women often feature as consumers of Chinese luxuries. By looking at receipts and account books, however, we understand that they were key distributors as well.
5
The design of Chinese export wares is commonly attributed to both the changing tastes of European consumers and the ingenuity of Canton artisans and artists who managed to accommodate or respond to Western taste with astonishing ease and flexibility. The East India Companies and indeed individual Company servants who travelled to Canton took on the role of expert communicators in this process and negotiated between distant demands and local supplies. And even though it is true that supercargoes were intensely preoccupied with choosing the right patterns and colours for silk garments, wallpaper and chinaware for specific markets, and by learning how to distinguish and decide upon different qualities of drugs and tea, lacquer and paintings, I claim that functional aspects played a key role in their commercial decisions on what goods were imported to Europe in the first place. Scholarly concerns with decoration, colour and the lustre of Chinese as well as Japanese export arts have hitherto ignored the important fact that the shape of export art was functional in the extreme and had to respond to the pragmatics of shipping and handling before consumer fancies and artisanal skill could be considered.93 The design principles of the Canton trade were the square box, the flat-pack and the rectangular chest.
Supercargoes were chiefly responsible for the safe packing and shipping of the cargo on board the East Indiamen. In that role, they collaborated and often fought with commanders over issues such as overcrowded cabins and common rooms, moist and musty holds, careless packing of easily breakable commodities and the dangers of goods in motion in a ship that was regularly swaying and shaken by bad weather conditions at sea. Formal rules and a set of best practices regarding the order in which goods were taken on board were attended to in all Companies. The Company cargo and bulk purchases of individuals in porcelain (of key importance due to its weight), rattan, tutenague94 and rice were, for instance, always transported in the ship’s hold – ‘to give stability to the ship’.95 Tea and raw silk were lightweight and
Historical depictions of the processes of weighing and packaging tea at Canton give us a glimpse of how important it was to standardise packaging for commodities that were bought en masse. The dimensions of tea chests and tubs in which loose tea was transported, for instance, were standardised by the early 1720s, and perhaps even earlier.99 The logistical challenge becomes quite clear if we consider, as Hanna Hodacs and Leos Müller have, the overall volume of the Scandinavian purchases of Bohea tea alone in a single year. The authors calculated that ‘[i]f one were to have piled the chests containing the Scandinavian import of Bohea tea from 1754 – a total of 10,339 chests – on top of one another, the stack would have measured almost seven kilometres in height: 6,763 metres, 21 times higher than the Eiffel tower’.100 Since the tea and other goods had to be carried and transferred many times during their journey between the Canton factories and the Company vessels at Whampoa, and then again on arriving near the home port, standardisation of weight and dimensions in chests allowed for their seamless storing on board, and eased their supervision, moving, counting and marking (Figures 10 and 11).
Determining the weight of the tea chests. Anonymous, Canton c. 1770. Watercolour on paper, 313 × 250 mm.
© rijksmuseum, amsterdam
Sampling the tea. Anonymous, Canton c. 1770. Watercolour on paper, 313 × 250 mm.
© rijksmuseum, amsterdam
Critical to the China trade is the fact that there was often a fine line between packaging and merchandise. Sea chests, carrying cases, trunks and boxes of all sizes were needed for the safe packing and shipping of smaller items of trade. Making a virtue out of necessity, many containers were made of attractive timbers,
Small padouk bureau. Chinese for the English market, c. 1730. The stand, a later English addition, is mahogany and probably nineteenth century.
© michael pashby antiques
Interior view of the small padouk bureau. Chinese for the English market, c. 1730.
© michael pashby antiques
Even though Chinese export wares were highly decorated, they remained simple in form. The most common feature was the square or rectangular shape; cabinets, trunks, writing boxes, bookcases all responded to the logistical demands and challenges of sea travel. The aforementioned were later upgraded by mounts of European craftsmanship. Legs or a complete stand were then added that brought the trunks and cabinets to a sufficient height so that the
To add to the panorama of functional design that dominated the China trade from early on, we can note that tea tables and serving trays, which were traded in great numbers, were as a general rule constructed in a set of five in defined sizes, so that the smaller tables could be neatly stowed within the larger ones, creating a nest which used up the least possible space during transport. Interestingly, as evidence from the Swedish auction catalogues suggests, tea tables were also sold on in sets rather than individually.103 One wonders whether they parted from their ‘brothers and sisters’ at some point in a shop or whether they continued to be used and displayed as a set once they entered a more permanent home. Buyers at the Swedish (and no doubt other European) auctions, too, were also given the opportunity to purchase larger table tops for
More elaborate designs were always possible and would augment the price, but even if such were chosen, they had to be able to be stowed tightly. In order to achieve that prerequisite, folding mechanisms were used extensively in Chinese export furniture design.104 The advantages of folding and disassembling parts for transporting furniture were known to the Europeans as well as the Chinese in military contexts. We cannot go into more detail here about the parallel development of campaign furniture in East and West, but to point at least to the common spirit also articulated in the design of Chinese export wares is not too big a stretch.
The supremacy of the box can be traced to smaller objects of the trade, too. Full-body miniature portraits of Canton traders made from bamboo and clay (which were sometimes dressed, but always painted) came in wooden display cases. Some have survived in museum collections. The portrait figure of a Western merchant in the V&A collection, c. 1710–1725, neatly fits into a slightly taller lacquered display case, which is opened thanks to a front door with hinges.105 The sitters in these lifelike clay portraits – souvenirs which were wildly popular with the China traders from the 1710s onwards – often appear seated on miniature Chinese chairs, or were depicted reclining on a Chinese-style daybed sporting fashionable garments.106 Exemplary is the case of Thomas Hall, the Ostend interloper who figured centrally in Chapter 1 (Figure 14). Intriguingly, the chair designs used for these miniature portraits were altogether atypical for Chinese export trade furniture. Horseshoe armchairs, for instance, were simply too bulky to be packed conveniently (Figure 15). As they could not be shipped in parts, as it was commonplace with chairs intended for the European market, they seem to have had no further appeal to the enterprising minds of the traders. Yet, as representations in miniature, Chinese-style furniture helped to render visible the sitter’s direct access and personal connection to that distant kingdom, which attracted so much attention in Europe at the time.
Figure of Thomas Hall, 1715–1730. Unfired clay, wood, velvet, straw. 31.115 cm × 33.338 cm × 15.24 cm. Attributed to Chinqua, active early 1700s, Canton, China.
© peabody essex museum, Salem
Clay-figure depicting dac undercargo Peter Mule (1693-1749), Height: 41 cm. Chinese artist, 1731. Canton, China.
© national museum of denmark
Chinese-style furniture of a bulkier kind reached Europe, of course, in the form of images. The two-dimensional export arts of Canton such as reverse
Myriad other goods came in purpose-made cases. Expensive ivory carvings of pagodas or junks were surrounded by display cases, which were usually made of glass.110 Fine teas were sold and gifted in attractive canisters, boxes and cases, and so were mother-of-pearl fans, Chinese ink, knives, walking canes and ‘ivory hats’, as Charles Irvine listed them in his private register of ‘Trinkets and Trifles’ that he had bought in Canton in 1739.111 The dimensions of crates for porcelain were set so they could contain a precise number of
6 Making Room for Private Trade
In order to get closer to the actual transport of goods, we have to hang on to our traders. Everybody on board an eic ship, from commanders and supercargoes, writers, cooks, surgeons and passengers, to the large number of seamen, worked and slept in close proximity to their own and other people’s merchandise and personal luggage for a journey of about nine months. Private space was non-existent for most mariners: it was indeed a key privilege for only a small number of navigating officers and merchants (and sometimes other passengers) on board.112 The lower somebody stood in the ship’s hierarchy, the more restrictive the rules were on their usage of space and their right to carry merchandise and provisions.113 Midshipmen, chief carpenters, gunners and the like were allowed to fill one sea chest of specified dimensions with trade goods and souvenirs. Others further up in the hierarchy on board were allowed to stow two to six privilege chests with goods in the hold.114 In addition, they were allowed to carry a chest with personal goods and garments to which they had access during their long and hazardous voyage. The bulk of private trade, and we are talking about several tons of goods per person, belonged to the commanders and supercargoes. Part of their private-trade cargo was stored in the hold and between decks. But supercargoes and commanders also used their private cabin to bring home a good portion of their more precious investments
Depictions of the interiors of eic trading vessels are quite rare for the earlier part of the eighteenth century.116 This is particularly true for the personal space of the cabin. Jan Brandes, an amateur artist who travelled on board the voc ship de Stavenisse, painted such a detailed view in 1785/86: the interior of a cabin of a Company surgeon (Figure 16). From that depiction, we can tease out a few aspects of relevance to the question of how supercargoes made room for their private trade.
Hut van de chirurgijn op het voc-schip de Stavenisse. Jan Brandes, 1785/86. Brush, 155 mm × 195 mm.
© rijksmuseum, amsterdam
Even though some elements of that room are transferable to the realities of the cabins of supercargoes a few decades earlier, the extraordinary level of cramped- and crowdedness that is apparent from written documents is not reflected in the image. Charles Irvine addressed a letter of regulations with regard to the storage of goods to the commanders of the two Swedish ships at Whampoa in 1741, instructing them of their shared responsibility in policing the implementation of these general rules. Regarding the organisation of cabin space, it was ordered that at least ‘2 foot square be left entirely empty at the Entrance into the Cabins of the first & second Supercargoes of both Ships & of the first and Second Captains of the Riddarhus & one foot square in the cabins of the other supercargoes […]’.117 This demonstrates that apart from a really small space that was to be left free of goods at the entrance of each cabin, the room was absolutely packed with things. The floor was covered with chests, which brought down the overall height of the rooms for their inhabitant. Tea chests were commonly used for that purpose but could also contain other goods. This the writer revealed when he reminded his fellow travellers ‘[t]hat there be no Teas stowed in Cabins but in the Original or Country Package & that there be no goods stored in them above three foot high’.118 The transportation of porcelain in cabins was – apart from items of necessary use during the voyage – strictly forbidden.
The floor literally moved beneath the feet of passengers with the rolling of the ship; it tipped them over and pitched them about, sometimes
overboard. Not just walking, but all manner of bodily activity needed to be relearned. Passengers took time to acquire new ‘sea legs’ and in bad weather they could even be thrown out of their berths while sleeping.119
What pertains to passengers on two legs regarding unintended motion was also true for four-legged furniture. A writing desk and a chair were often the only movable pieces of furniture in the cabin space that supercargoes used for their original purpose. A writing desk with foldable top and a chair brought stability to their bodily comportment and facilitated practices that were essential to a merchant’s routine and leisure on land and at sea: the reading and writing of correspondence and accounts and the study of books.120
Other large items of furniture intended for later sale such as additional writing desks, bookcases and cabinets were temporarily repurposed to serve as containers, thus limiting their motion. They were jam-packed with other merchandise, from wrought silks and paintings to ivory snuffboxes and shoes of gold. Coming back to the point that design needed to be appropriate to the idiosyncratic challenges of maritime transportation, it was of prime importance to travellers that cabinets and trunks could be locked. Cabinets were sometimes put down on the floor of the cabin to avoid their falling over onto their owner or, as Kyoungjin Bae suggested, were repurposed as bedframes and benches.121
Three Dutchmen in a Sloop. Ivory carving, Canton, c. 1725–1750, 7 cm × 16 cm.
© rijksmuseum, amsterdam
In order to cushion and protect individual pieces of furniture, textiles and bundles of cloth were particularly suitable for storage in cabins. A small ivory carving, made in Canton for the Dutch market in the first half of the eighteenth century, offers a rare view of such soft bundles as they appear next to a number of chests with hinges and a purpose-made carrying case, arguably to contain and protect the large porcelain jar that one of the depicted traders embraces devotedly (Figure 17). Intended as a souvenir, this carving takes a light-hearted view of the perils of transport and the emotions that traders expressed in relation to the handling of their precious cargo. Even though all three men are smiling and show real dedication to the goods in their movements, the hands of the figure on the left indicate that he is still worried that
In relation to the issues of packing and shipping, it is, in sum, imperative to see traders both as cunning entrepreneurs and as worried, sometimes suffering individuals. They needed to somehow find a compromise between packing as many freight-free goods as possible and creating a space they could actually inhabit safely and comfortably for many months.122 Smart decisions on design and packaging such as the delicate method of stacking smaller goods within larger ones (call it the Russian doll strategy) within the space of the cabin were core preoccupations of China trade entrepreneurs that demand our attention – and perhaps a little admiration. A vast literature on private and Company trade has been either occupied with the ornamentation of individual objects or with the study of orders and cargo lists to calculate the overall significance of particular categories of goods (such as tea, porcelain and silks) over time. Yet the space in between, that is the critical role of logistics in determining not only the composition of imported goods but, crucially, also their design, has instead been highlighted here. China traders literally made room for private-trade goods when they attended to social obligations at home and
…
To conclude, this chapter has explored the role of Europe’s maritime elite in the trade with China through a special focus on their important privilege and commission trade and its myriad functions in ‘greasing’ this global commerce. Supercargoes, captains and commanders, either employed in the older and bigger East India Companies or working as interlopers for the smaller Companies on the continent, were significant European merchants and also collectors and consumers of Eastern goods in their own right. To understand more thoroughly the roles of merchant mariners as significant facilitators of cross-cultural commerce in the realm of the commission trade, a typology of four different kinds of commissioners was presented. The typology showed that early European consumers for novel Chinese goods often had close family relations to privileged East India Company merchants, which allowed them to acquire and display fine Chinese objects literally unavailable on the open market during the early stages. It also showed that with time, the consumption of goods from China radiated beyond such well-connected Company families, ultimately including wider social groups, professional distributors and institutions such as corporations, clubs and Masonic lodges. The latter secured access to the distribution channels of private traders through personal contacts and polite sociability, as in the case of lavish balls being thrown by China traders upon their appointment in order to attract a wide range of special commissions. The different types of commission make clear that to fully understand the importance of supercargoes and captains for Europe’s trade with China during the first half of the eighteenth century, it is vital to acknowledge them as fully-fledged commercial entrepreneurs and as avid consumers. The fulfilment of special commissions for friends and fellow traders played a particularly prominent role in the first half of the eighteenth century, the mechanisms and meanings of which have been explored here in detail.
By shifting the focus more closely to the assemblage of goods that made up the private trade to China, this chapter has finally revealed a novel aspect of the design principles underlying the trade. It argued that even though the decoration of Chinese export wares changed according to Chinese innovations
Findlen, ‘Afterword’, p. 245.
Research on Chinese export wallpaper has advanced significantly in recent years; see, e.g., de Bruijn, Chinese Wallpaper in Britain and Ireland; for continental Europe, the definitive study is Wappenschmidt, Chinesische Tapeten.
See, for instance, Pierson, ‘Chinese Porcelain’.
For a general overview, see Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader; Kerr and Mengoni, Chinese Export Ceramics; Godden, Oriental Export Market Porcelain; Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade; Clunas (ed.), Chinese Export Art and Design. On the trans-Pacific trade in Chinese porcelain, see Priyadarshini, Chinese Porcelain in Colonial Mexico. For works on armorial porcelain in different national markets, Kroes, Chinese Armorial Porcelain; Díaz, Chinese Armorial Porcelain.
Bae, ‘Joints of Utility’; Wu, ‘Chinese Wallpaper’; Kleutghen, ‘Imports and Imitations’.
Smith, ‘Manly Objects?’; Clifford, ‘From Canton to Country House’; for a theoretical engagement with the social dimensions of things, see Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things.
Jörg, The Geldermalsen History; for an excellent discussion of shipwrecked material culture, see Green, ‘Valentines’, esp. pp. 242–248.
Van Dyke and Mok, ‘Rise of the Private Traders’, esp. p. 57.
Godden, Oriental Export Market Porcelain, p. 15.
Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader, p. 11.
For a short period of time, in the early 1700s, the eic invested in lacquerwares, such as fans, nesting tables and tea trays. But this enterprise was soon abandoned. The Court of Directors reminded their outgoing supercargoes that ‘It is found by experience that they [Chinese artisans] Lacker or Jappan better at Chusan than at Canton therefore be very curious in getting all the Lacquer’d or Japann’d fans don well and by the best Workmen.’ Quoted from bl, ior/e/3/96, fols. 289–291, ‘List of Goods to be Provided at Chusan’; a large Company order of tea tables of different sizes was placed with the outgoing supercargoes in 1709, see bl, ior/e/3/96, p. 577.
See Kerr and Ayers, Blanc de Chine.
As a counterpoint to that, there was consistently high demand for Chinese silks in Scandinavia which both the Scandinavian East India Company and private traders successfully catered for. Hodacs, ‘Cheap and Cheerful’.
In 1730, ‘the commander’s homeward bound privilege had been more or less fixed at 13 tons’, an assigned space that Nelly at least doubled to bring his merchandise home. For an overview regarding the changing allocation of privilege space on East Indiamen, see Pritchard, ‘Private Trade’, p. 118.
Nelly drew up his last will before heading to Canton on 26 November 1739, appointing eic Captain Richard Pinnell, Samuel Skinner (a Canton supercargo) and his wife as executors. Nelly bequeathed his house in Poplar, as well as the proceeds of his estate, his chinaware, furniture, pictures, clothing apparel, etc. to his wife (Kathell?) Nelly and ordered that Government securities, shares, etc. should be used to invest his fortune, heritable by his wife and their two sons Francis and Richard Nelly. Nelly’s two sisters inherited £500 each. tna, prob 11/653/19, Will of Francis Nelly of Poplar.
When commissions failed to be delivered or came in at a much higher price than previously agreed, commissioners sometimes took to the law. tna, Chancery Master’s Exhibits, C 103/192, Moreton vs. Newnam.
Ibid.
bl, ior/g/12/31, p. 224.
Pritchard, ‘Private Trade’, appendix xii: ‘Private Trade of Captains and Others on Various Ships, 1699–1784’, p. 252.
These sums were computed on the basis of: ‘A Compilation of the China Investment to be made at Canton, for the Cargos to be laden on board our ships Hartford, Macclesfield, Cesar and Harrison, with Orders & Directions relating there to’, 4 December 1730, bl, ior/e/3/105, 1730–1731, p. 24. The directors anticipated a total investment in merchandise other than gold of 4,796,500 Chinese tael (or £1,598,837). Three tael equal one pound sterling. See Nierstrasz, Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles, ‘Measurements’, p. xv.
‘Orders and Instructions to James Naish, Nathaniel Torriano, Philip Middelton, Abraham Wessels, Richard Moreton and Thomas Fytche, Council for China 4 Dec. 1730’, bl, ior/e/3/105, p. 25.
Chapter 4, below, provides a detailed analysis of these dynamics.
This view has not remained unchallenged. For the volumes and diffusion of pacotille goods in the French East India Company and textiles especially see Margoline-Plot, ‘Les circuits parallèles’, p. 113; for a comparative glance at multiple companies, see Berg et al., ‘Private Trade and Monopoly Structures’.
In the 1750s the eic alone sent about twenty ships to the East in one sailing season. In the late eighteenth century this number more than doubled to fifty ships per year. See Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit’, pp. 43f.
Royal families were also among this first group of commissioners. Howard, Chinese Armorial Porcelain, p. 69.
On the persistence of gift-giving strategies among the Anglo-Indian elite, see Finn, ‘Colonial Gifts’.
Memorandum, undated (most likely from 1765), of John Searle Esq., tna, C 107/154.
Finn, ‘Colonial Gifts’, p. 205.
Even if access to the commission trade was still restricted until the 1750s, the fashion for Chinoiserie was very widespread at this point across Europe. For a fine study that sensibly includes Chinese export wares, see Sloboda, Chinoiserie.
The many surviving pieces of Chinese armorial porcelain in Britain and on the continent best reveal the personal connections between eic servants and the landed elite in Europe. For examples, see Kerr and Mengoni, Chinese Export Ceramics, esp. pp. 39–57. As a collaborative venture ‘The East India Company at Home (1757–1857)’ project generated many detailed studies on individual Company families and their political, imperial and material connections to the British landed elite. Finn and Smith (eds), The East India Company at Home.
London Chronicle, or, Universal Evening Post, 13, Thursday, 30 December to Saturday, 1 January 1763. My emphasis.
bl, ior/e/3/107ff., esp. pp. 107f., 270–275; p. 298.
Frederick Pigou was also the co-owner of gunpowder mills at Dartford, Kent. See Cook, ‘Andrews, Miles Peter’.
Srinivasachari (ed.), Indian Records, p. 105. Regional newspapers reprinted the news from the London Gazette (21 July 1765), noting the stay of the British King in Lisbon, which was in apparent need of repairs. See Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 15 August 1765, British Newspaper Archive.
Harvey, ‘Barbarity in a Teacup?’.
Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader, p. 26.
Ibid., p. 12.
See ibid.
Mézin et al., Cargoes from China, chapter on ‘Family China’, pp. 153–181.
Ibid., p. 153.
A good overview of these is provided in Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade. Jörg also describes how models and drawings were furnished to the supercargoes for their regular purchases of Company porcelain. See ibid., esp. pp. 106f.
Blussé, Visible Cities, esp. pp. 30–40.
Jörg, ‘Jan Albert Sichterman’, p. 190.
See Finlay, The Pilgrim Art, esp. pp. 254–261. On the importance of the Chinese community at Manila for the supply of Chinese goods to the Spaniards, see Johns, China and the Church, esp. pp. 54f.; on Manila as a crossroads for global trade, see Tremml-Werner, Spain, China, and Japan.
On this interplay, Smith, ‘Manly Objects?’.
See Godden, Oriental Export Market Porcelain, p. 16.
Ibid., p. 29.
Van Dyke and Mok, Images of the Canton Factories, see esp. ‘Problems with Porcelain’, pp. 23–28.
Spencer (ed.), Memoirs of William Hickey, p. 210, quoted in Van Dyke and Mok, Images of the Canton Factories, p. 23.
For theoretical reflections on the importance of novelty in consumer behaviour, see Bianchi, ‘Taste for Novelty’.
See, for instance, Hellman, ‘The Joy of Sets’.
Sharma and Davies, ‘A Jaghire without a Crime’, p. 91.
Cruickshanks, ‘Sir Francis Child’.
The chairs were only assembled in Europe. The lacquered backs and seats were shipped ‘flat-packed’ from China, see Bae, ‘Joints of Utility’, pp. 55f. For a full case study regarding Osterley’s Asian legacy, see Sharma and Davies, ‘A Jaghire without a Crime’.
On the functioning of East India Company auctions and the subversion of official regulations, see Chapter 2. A room-by-room listing of the vast number of Asian export wares at Osterley is provided in, ‘The 1782 Inventory’.
Carolyn Sargentson, in her study of the marchants merciers of Paris, notes the difficulty that French mercers often had in the period considered here finding lacquer of exceptional quality on the continent. See Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets, pp. 63f.
See Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit’, p. 45; Caldedonian Mercury, 27 August 1754, p. 3.
bl, ior/g/12/26, p. 39.
Private-trade goods such as textiles, tea, spices, fans and sugar candy were usually sold separately from Company goods, yet also by auction. See, for instance, ‘Richard Moreton’s claim in the East India Warehouse’ (c. 1732) listing all his private-trade goods on four different ships awaiting the public auction, quoted in tna, Chancery Master’s Records, C 103/192, Moreton vs. Newman.
bl, ior/g/12/25, p. 9.
See bl, ior/g/12/27, p. 123.
William Hickey, a most acute observer of social etiquette and personal comportment, immortalised the inhabitants of the British Canton factory in 1765, during his four-month visit there, where he was received in his words own with ‘a hospitality and kindness nothing could exceed’. Yet, his travel narrative also gave an account of more shadowy characters in his company; the mad Doctor Court, who made a game out of attracting and then beating up Chinese pickpockets, the choleric and vain surgeon Mr Carnegie, whose likeness (a self-portrait he commissioned in unfired clay with a famous Chinese export artist in town) was not to his liking. Spencer (ed.) Memoirs of William Hickey, pp. 220f.; p. 227.
Fay, Original Letters from India. Cited in Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit’, p. 44.
Hallberg and Koninckx (eds), A Passage to China, p. 67.
Spencer (ed.), Memoirs of William Hickey, pp. 213f.; Patrick Lawson famously fitted out a former French ship in 1787 which he navigated to Canton.
On friendship and sociability among foreign visitors in Canton, see Hellman, This House is not a Home, esp. pp. 130–136.
They shared a distaste for drunkards. Campbell wrote also at length about an incompetent Swedish commander on his first journey to China in an seic ship. See Hallberg and Koninckx (eds), A Passage to China, esp. pp. 1–19.
Colin Campbell mingled in highest circles in Sweden, procured commissions, gifted lavishly and received many tokens of acknowledgment by the Swedish royal family in return. See the objects mentioned in his last will. Cormack, Colin Campbell.
‘Invoice of Pacotil[le] on the Calmar’, January 1745, Shipping Documents, 1733–1759, Box 11, Irvine Papers, fbl.
Ibid.
Appadurai, ‘Introduction’, in idem (ed.) The Social Life of Things, p. 26.
Cited ibid.
‘Invoice of Pacotil[le] on the Calmar’, January 1745, Shipping Documents, 1733–1759, Box 11, Irvine Papers, fbl.
‘Journal Book of Affairs of Thomas Hall. Beginning in Ostend August 10th 1724’, tna, Chancery Masters’ Exhibits, C 111/95, Hall vs. Hallett.
See Nechtman, Nabobs; the diverse research findings from ‘The East India Company at Home (1757–1857)’ project also need to be considered, which significantly enrich our understanding of the influence that the East India Company and empire had on Britain’s material past.
Porter, ‘Chinoiserie’; the fashion for Chinese and pseudo-Chinese ornaments figures prominently in Scott, The Rococo Interior.
Hugh Campbell (Gothenburg) to Charles Irvine (Gothenburg), 17 March 1740, cic, fbl.
Ibid. Such porcelain jars (‘potts’) for tea and spices were used for display and were regular gifts among merchants.
Ibid.
Audric, Chinese Reverse Glass Painting, p. 110.
Bills of lading, 4 January 1739, signed by Thomas Neilson (commander of the Fredericus Rex Suecia), Shipping Documents, 1733–59, Box 11, items 39–3d and 39–4d, Irvine Papers, fbl.
Audric, Chinese Reverse Glass Painting, esp. p. 91.
‘Private Memorandum’ from Colin Campbell (Gothenburg) to Charles Irvine (Gothenburg), 10 February 1740, cic, fbl.
Ibid.
More recent work on the relation between European merchants with their Chinese counterparts has done much to revise the obsession of earlier studies with the supposed rigidity and arbitrariness of the Canton trade. See, for instance, Van Dyke, ‘Weaver Suckin’; Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau.
‘Private Memorandum’ from Colin Campbell (Gothenburg) to Charles Irvine (Gothenburg), 10 February 1740, cic, fbl.
Ibid. Kyoungjin Bae used that quotation in her work, but misread the source. It is ‘Compradore Atay’, not ‘Commodore Hay’, who is referred to as the maker of the chairs. Cf. Bae, ‘Joints of Utility’, pp. 60f.
Quoted in Cormack, Colin Campbell, p. 11.
Patrick Lawson was born in Banff (Scotland), which was then one of the main smuggling centres on the north coast of Scotland, and he was related to the Duff clan (Earls of Fife). Several members of the Duff family previously worked for the seic and were heavily involved in the contraband trade to Britain via Scotland.
Bodleian Library, Oxford (blo), ms. Eng. hist. c.331, account book of Captain Patrick Lawson (nineteen pages, dated 1778), p. 1.
Ibid.
Ibid.
See, for instance, Etienne and Lee, ‘Lüster, Lack und Liotard’; my reading of Chinese export wares is shared by a recent study on the Sino-British furniture trade, Bae, ‘Joints of Utility’, p. 57.
Tutenague is an alloy of zinc and copper and was steadily imported on Company as well as private accounts.
As Conrad Gill pointed out, supercargoes generally preferred to buy ‘smaller wares, because larger pieces of china-ware’, for instance, ‘were less easy to pack, involved more loss if they were broken’. Gill, Merchants and Mariners, p. 33.
See, for instance, the detailed instructions for the eic supercargoes on board the Loyal Bliss, bl, ior/e/3/97, p. 666.
Ibid.
On the fetishisation of the container as a metaphor for globalisation, Haugen, ‘The Social Production of Container Space’. I thank Lesley Nicole Braun for alerting me to this current debate in anthropology.
Gill, Merchants and Mariners, p. 36. Though amendments to the thickness and protection of the chests and their content were regularly made, see ‘Orders and Instructions to James Naish, Nathaniel Torriano …’, Council for China, 4 December 1730, bl, ior/e/3/105, p. 19.
Hodacs and Müller, ‘Chests, Tubs and Lots of Tea’, pp. 277f.
Details of which can be gathered by the description of ‘Lacquierte Waren’ in the seic sales catalogues. For 1733, see p. 133; for the sale in 1736, see p. 81. Accessible online:
On the myriad methods of smuggling articles of private trade ashore without paying the Company the appropriate fees, see Bowen, ‘“So Alarming an Evil”’; further on smuggling practices in the eighteenth century, see Mui and Mui, ‘Trends’; idem., ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade’
seic sales catalogue, 1736, pp. 87–90.
Several interesting examples are provided in Bae, ‘Joints of Utility’, p. 57.
Figure of a Western merchant with wooden box, China, Qing dynasty, c. 1710–1725, fe.32-b-1981, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Another such portrait in its accompanying, but much more humble case is depicted in Sargent, ‘“The Features are Esteem’d Very Just”’, p. 213.
Clay figures have attracted much attention lately, see Broomhall, ‘Face-Making’; Schokkenbroek, ‘Figuring Out Global and Local Relations’.
The full spectrum of furniture used in reverse glass paintings can be seen in Audric, Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings.
Influential in this regard was certainly the former supercargo of the Swedish East India Company, William Chambers, who published his widely read treatise on Chinese architecture, furniture and design in 1757. See. Idem, Designs of Chinese Buildings.
See Smith, ‘The Afterlife of Objects’, esp. pp. 80–83; for comparison, see also the ‘hybrid’ furniture produced for the French inhabitants of Pondicherry. Le Doudic, ‘Encounters around the Material Object’.
‘Bill of lading, Five Brothers, Gothenburg, 1739’, Shipping Documents, 1733–59, Box 11, item 39–1d, Irvine Papers, fbl.
The lack of personal space remained an issue well into the nineteenth century and is masterfully described in Pietsch, ‘Bodies at Sea’.
The seic filled half a chest of tea on behalf of each sailor, for which they were given cash after the voyage. Letters to Captain Kalling and Ekmans, 31 August 1741 (written by Charles Irvine in his role as chief supercargo of the seic), Shipping Documents, 1733–59, item 41–1d1, Irvine Papers, fbl.
These regulations were changing slightly from year to year and from Company to Company. On freight-free tonnage restrictions in the eic, see Pritchard, ‘Private Trade’, esp. p. 113 and pp. 118f.
Ibid.
The place for elite sociability on board was the captain’s table in the round-house, access to which was highly restricted. Portraits of commanders usually focus on this larger and furnished space on board.
Letters to Captain Kalling and Ekmans, 31 August 1741, Shipping Documents, 1733–59, Box 11, Irvine Papers, fbl.
Ibid.
Pietsch, ‘Bodies at Sea’, p. 215.
Charles Irvine ordered new books in French and English before every journey and exchanged them with colleagues such as Arthur Abercromby. He read Montesquieu and Racine with particular dedication and later in life also expressed his admiration for progressive works of history writing such as David Hume’s multi-volume History of England, the first volume of which appeared in 1754.
Bae, ‘Joints of Utility’, p. 54.
On boredom, discomfort and desperation at sea, see Pietsch ‘Bodies at Sea’; for a dense and illuminating reading of the material culture of ocean-travel in the medieval Indian Ocean world, see Lambourn, Abraham’s Luggage, esp. pp. 189–218.
Charles Irvine (Gothenburg) to Thomas Wilkieson (Amsterdam), 4 May 1743, Letter Book, 1742–43, Irvine Papers, fbl.