Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 358
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-5381-3628-7 • Hardback • February 2020 • $110.00 • (£85.00)
978-1-5381-3629-4 • Paperback • February 2020 • $44.00 • (£34.00)
978-1-5381-3630-0 • eBook • February 2020 • $39.00 • (£30.00)
John M. Carroll is professor of history at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong and A Concise History of Hong Kong.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Notes
Chapter 1 The Place, the System, and the People
The “Entrance of Pandemonium”
A “Perfect System”
Coping with the “Intolerable Restrictions”
“Various Petty Collisions”
Accommodation and Collaboration in the Contact Zone
“An Extraordinary Jargon”
“Two Living Streams or Tides of Human Beings”
Notes
Chapter 2 Communities and Personalities
Through American Eyes
Remaining in Canton
George Thomas Staunton’s Life in China
“Some Real Geniuses in Wit, Science, and Art”
“Good Works”
“Useful Knowledge”
Notes
Chapter 3 Life and Work
The “Ungallant” Exclusion
“Serious Illnesses in This Country”
Confinement and Routine
“United Together in a Kind of Brotherhood”
“The Harmony of Our Little Society”
Friendships
Staying On
Notes
Chapter 4 Outlets
Dinners and Parties
The Gardens at Fa-ti
Rowing and Regattas
“Turning Out” to Macao
In the Storm
Notes
Chapter 5 Commemorations and Institutions
“The Nautical Oracle of the World”
The British Chamber of Commerce
The Parsis
The Canton General Chamber of Commerce
Community through Grievances
Grievances, Character, and Conduct
Notes
Chapter 6 Factories, Fear, and Fire
Combustible Canton
The Great Fire of 1822
Frustration and Helplessness
Fire and “the Chinese Character”
Fire as Opportunity (or Not)
Fire and Grievances
Notes
Chapter 7 Robert Morrison’s Life in China
With the Americans
With the East India Company
The Company and Morrison’s Dictionaries
Morrison and the Press
Change and Uncertainty
The Superintendent of Trade and the Napier Mission
“A Loyal and Industrious Son”
Notes
Chapter 8 Dying in China
“Gonged to Death”
“He Carried to the Grave the Regrets of All”
“A Mysterious Secret”
Death and the British in China
Notes
Epilogue: Canton and Beyond
Notes
Bibliography
Index
On the basis of fine research, Carroll has presented a virtual cyclorama of the British community in Canton during the decades prior to the Opium War. He has successfully brought together many aspects of that community’s life hitherto dealt with most often as separate subjects.
— Richard Grace, emeritus, Providence College; author of Opium and Empire
For nearly a century before 1842, the ‘factories,’ one tiny patch of ground in the great city we know as Guangzhou, formed China’s window on the world. John Carroll brings that hothouse arena vividly to life in this pioneering account of the Britons who lived, worked, dreamed, and died there. One still-powerful strand in modern China’s history began in this sliver of old Canton: now we have the book that helps us understand that place and time.
— Robert Bickers