Qing trade confined to Canton
The Qing court restricted all Western maritime trade to Canton, where foreign merchants were confined to the Thirteen Factories on the Pearl River, could not enter the city or the interior, could not deal directly with producers, and had to transact through the licensed Cohong. The system channelled an enormous tea export through one legal aperture, which the Qing state taxed and supervised. It also meant European buyers knew almost nothing about where tea was grown or how it was made — an ignorance that shaped everything that followed.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou · city · China
- Cohong (Gonghang) · merchant guild · China · not located
- English (later British) East India Company · chartered company · not located
- Tea · trade good · not located
- Silver · trade good · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
Rise and Fall of the Canton Trade System
Between 1757 and 1842 all Western maritime trade with China was confined to Canton and conducted through the Cohong, with tea the dominant export and silver the dominant means of payment.
MIT Visualizing Cultures, Massachusetts Institute of Technology · 2010 · Verified
Peter C. Perdue, 'Rise & Fall of the Canton Trade System', MIT Visualizing Cultures, visualizingcultures.mit.edu/rise_fall_canton_01 (essay PDF cw_essay.pdf)
East India Company factory records for China, India Office Records
The Company's Canton trade, its tea purchases and cargo accounting, and its administrative decision-making are documented in a single surviving institutional archive.
British Library, Asian and African Studies (India Office Records) · 1600–1858 · Partly verified
British Library, India Office Records, IOR/G/12 — Factory Records: China and Japan (Canton consultations, diaries, tea invoices and cargo accounts); related Court Minutes at IOR/B
Recorded on Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
- Tea buried in the Han Yangling mausoleum
- Tea-for-horse exchange between China and Tibet
- Silver ore is registered at the Cerro Rico of Potosí
- Manila is founded as the eastern terminus
- Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
- Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes
- Qing trade confined to Canton
- Boston Tea Party
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
- Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
- The Opium Wars
- First Assam tea auctioned in London
- Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
- Treaty of Nanking
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China · 1848–1851
- Treaty of Nanking · 1842-08-29
- Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen · 1839-06-03/1839-06-25
- First Assam tea auctioned in London · 1839-01-10
- The Opium Wars · 1839–1860
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded · 1834
- Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam · 1823
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty · 1784