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The Buddhist Temple of Kun Iam Tong (the Goddess of Mercy), Macao, China
Where the first Sino-American Treaty of Wangxia was signed in 1844
Watercolor by George R. West, artist traveling with Caleb Cushing

List of Participants | Tentative Schedule

RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM OVERVIEW:

In 1844, Caleb Cushing, the United States Commissioner to China, negotiated The Treaty of Wangxia. In the wake of England's victory over China in the Opium War, the treaty supposedly established "Relations of peace and amity between the United States and China" and guaranteed that vessels of the United States would be "admitted to trade freely to and from the five ports of China open to foreign commerce..." (Article 22)

Unknown Chinese artist,   The Hongs in Canton, Before 1803.   Oil on Canvas, 33 1/2 x 48.

This interdiscplinary research colloquium focuses on the accounts of commerce between China and the United States in decades before this treaty and in the subsequent two centuries. To what extent was there a common language of commerce? Was "trade" ever "free"? How were the stories of early Sino-American commerce told in newspapers, in biographies, in fiction? What issues of translation or communication were important to the negotiation of commerce and how do these issues affect how we understand these accounts to this day?

The goal of the conference is to bring together scholars from across various discplines, nationalities, and institutions to consider these questions. Possible topics areas from the early period include (but are certainly not limited to) the diaries and letters of Henrietta Shuck and Mary P. Snow; the co-hongs and compradores of the China Trade; travelogues by John Ledyard, Samuel Shaw, and Amasa Delano; the treaty process undertaken by Caleb Cushing; the rules and venues of international litigation; contemporary theories of finance, and practices of book-keeping; the representation of American Chinese trade in the work of John Francis Davis; and the cultures of print production, circulation, and advertisment that stretched across the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Finally, how did (and does) trade with China affect other narratives of trade in networks that might include Holland, Japan, Korea, Portugal, etc.?

Furthermore, the narratives considered need not be written texts; for example, papers might focus on the paintings of George West, "unknown Chinese artists" (see figure to the right) or the evolving architecture and maps of Chinese and American cities that refelect the China trade. Finally, our hope is to balance papers that consider Chinese perspectives on Americans with those that consider American perspectives on China, and to consider the challenges of translation, textual circulation, and contemporary academic institutionalization that continue to structure considerations of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Chinese-American trade relations.

When and Where:
Hong Kong University, Hong Kong; Instituto Cultural (Macau); Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou)
15-19 (Monday-Friday) June 2009.

Session Format:
The colloquium will consist of one-hour sessions during which time a participant will present his or her paper and discuss the essay with the group. We ask that each colloquium participant submit a draft of his or her paper in English by 1 June (Monday) 2009 to Kendall Johnson [kjohnson @ hku.hk ]. The essays will then be distributed to the fellow participants before the colloquium convenes.

Publications:
We hope to publish the conference proceedings in English as a book collection that is then translated into Chinese and Japanese. Contributors will be asked to submit their final essay for purposes of publication by 1 December 2009.

Deadlines:
For submitting a draft of the paper for distribution to fellow colloquium participants: 1 (Monday) Jun 2009

Contact Person:
Please correspond with Kendall Johnson at [ kjohnson @ hku.hk ].

• Paul Bové (Distinguished Professor, University of Pittsburg; Editor, boundary 2)
  http://www.english.pitt.edu/people/faculty/bove.html
  
  "To Make A Way: Telling a Story of US / China Union"
  
  Paul Bové is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and editor of the journal boundary 2, published by Duke University Press. Bové has been a member of the Pitt faculty since 1979 and was named a distinguished professor in 2005. Bové also holds affiliations with the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University of Valencia in Spain and the Centre for International Political Studies in Pretoria, South Africa. From 1994 to 1999 he served on the board of directors of the Institute of Postmodern Studies at Peking University.
  
  
• Max Cavitch (Associate Professor of American Literature, The University of Pennsylvania).
  http://www.english.upenn.edu/People/Faculty/profile.php?pennkey=cavitch
  
  "Narratives of Privacy Between America and China"
  
  My paper offers a differential analysis of privacy concepts across centuries and cultures. Recent developments in U.S./China trade-- especially those having to do with digital content--have drawn attention to the historical differences between American and Chinese concepts of privacy. In both law and social practice, these differences have been profound. However, contemporary digital commerce and the aggregation of electronic consumer data seem to point to a future in which those differences will have to be very carefully managed, if not fully resolved. In order to look toward that future, I begin by taking a position in the past: in the rather unusual history of a psychiatric patient, Richard Nisbett, in early nineteenth-century Philadelphia, whose own experience of privacy in the early United States was structured by a delusional system that reached all the way around the world. My paper focuses on the place of China--specifically of Guangzhou/Canton--within his delusional system, as reflected in a short essay he wrote in which he imagined himself to be the great Chinese painter of a work actually painted by Benjamin West. Nisbett's essay survives as part of his official medical record. As such, it has a very ambiguous status under current U.S. privacy law. How might this ambiguous status be understood in the Chinese context? My paper will address this question reflexively, in relation to our research colloquium. For to tell this story of the early Sino-American imaginary, I argue, we must confront the problem of Nisbett's status in our own time--in China as well as in the U.S.--as both an object for historical research and as a subject with possibly enduring privacy interests.
  
  Max Cavitch joined Penn's faculty in 1999, after receiving his B.A. from Yale and his Ph.D. from Rutgers. He teaches all forms and phases of American literature from the beginnings of English contact and settlement to the present day. His teaching and research interests also include gender and sexuality studies, historical poetics, and cinema. His book American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman was recently published by the University of Minnesota Press. He has also published essays on a variety of topics in the journals, including American Literary History, American Literature, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Early American Literature, Screen, and Victorian Poetry. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, the Penn Humanities Forum, and Cornell's Society for the Humanities. He is presently Associate Chair of the English Department, and he continues to serve on the Advisory and Executive Councils of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
  
  
• May Bo Ching (Professor of History, Sun Yat-sen University).
  http://www.nmm.ac.uk/library/2008/02/may_bo_ching_asian_gallery_fel.html
  
  "Chopsticks or Cutlery?: How Canton Hong merchants entertained their foreign guests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries"
  
  Like what is happening today, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, much business and social exchanges between the Canton Hong merchants and their foreign counterparts were conducted at the dining table. Yet unlike the contemporary businessmen who usually hold banquets in a nice restaurant, the old Canton Hong merchants entertained their guests in their luxurious residences, which were well facilitated with experienced family cooks, stylish furniture, fine chinaware, and needless to say, tasty food. To please their guests, the Chinese hosts offered dishes, wine, and dinner service in both Chinese and Western style; and the result was a mixture of tastes and etiquettes at the same dining table. In this paper, the author tries to ask some very straight-forward questions: What and how food was served at the banquets hosted by Canton Hong merchants? What kind of knowledge did the Chinese cooks and servants possess for entertaining the foreign guests? What kind of impact might this material cultural exchange have left to Canton in the subsequent years? First-hand accounts given by foreign residents in their diaries, letters, and travel journals will be the major sources used in this article for answering these questions.
  
  May Bo CHING is Professor of History at Sun Yat-sen University. Her major research interest is the social and cultural history of modern China. Her book Regional Culture and National Identity: the shaping of Guangdong Culture" since the late Qing (in Chinese) discusses changes in the articulation of regional identity against the rise of nationalism at the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her current projects include a preliminary study of the introduction of natural history drawings and knowledge into China since the late eighteenth century and a social history of Cantonese opera from the 1860s to 1950s.
  
  
• John R. Haddad (Associate Professor of American Studies and Literature, Penn State University, Harrisburg)
  http://php.scripts.psu.edu/dept/iit/hbg/facultystaff/faculty_details.php?aid=jrh36&array=H
  
  "China of the American Imagination: The Influence of Trade on U.S. Portrayals of China, 1820 to 1860"
  
  This paper takes a close look at the early years of the Sino-American economic relationship (1820-1860) so as to explore the effect this trade had on Americans' perceptions of China. This was a crucial period in which, from the perspective of American traders, China progressed from being mostly closed (the Canton or "Hong" Trading system) to engaging trade at multiple ports (the "Treaty Port" system). Our knee-jerk reaction is perhaps to assume that, in American portrayals of China, China would ascend along an upwards trajectory as it became increasingly open to trade. After all, previously vexed and frustrated traders-- the chief intermediaries between the two nations -- were presumably happier (and richer) thanks to China's openness. What is more, Americans in China could, for the first time, enjoy access to cities and regions beyond Canton; with this new freedom to travel, they could explore and study China's landscapes, flora and fauna, culture, and customs and share their findings with countrymen back in the United States. Yet this paper finds that, paradoxically, highly restricted trade produced a favorable (even romantic!) vision of China in the United States. Conversely, as China opened to the West, American constructions darkened considerably, sometimes descending to the level of cruel mockery. This paper hopes to resolve this paradox by examining the people, objects, and cultural productions that, in these early years, influenced what we may call the "China of the American imagination."
  
  Dr. Haddad joined Penn State Harrisburg in 2003. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas and an M.A. in English from Yale. While teaching in China and Japan, Dr. Haddad developed an interest in Asia that is eflected in his scholarly interests. His research has investigated ways Americans learned about China in the nineteenth century: museum exhibits, trade objects, travel writing, missionary literature, international expositions, magic lantern shows, and moving pictures. His first book, The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture, 1776–1876, was published by Columbia University Press in 2006.
  
  
• Sibing He (Research Fellowship, Instituto Cultural do Governo da R.A.E. de Macau; Guangzhou, China)
  http://www.icm.gov.mo/deippub/research2E.asp
  
  "Russell and Company and the Imperialism of Free Trade"
  
  In their classic study on free trade imperialism, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson observed that the most common political technique of British expansion in the mid-Victorian era was perhaps the treaty of free trade and friendship imposed on a weaker state. The free trade rationale and political technique advanced by the British, as scholars of American foreign relations have noted, were utilized and refined by the United States to forge its own informal empire in East Asia in the nineteenth century. The story of Russell and Company, the largest American firm in nineteenth-century China, reveals that the American China traders by and large sided in principle with the British on the question of free trade. The disagreement between the British and Americans was over means, not the end--they were both determined to draw China into the emerging capitalist world system. A recent study of the origins of U.S. China policy, however, argues that the United States developed an independent China policy primarily in reaction to the threat of its British rival's monopolization of East Asian markets. This paper seeks to challenge that revisionist view and uphold the long-standing notion that Americans adopted the "jackal diplomacy" in order to take advantage of an opportunity provided by the British victory in the Opium War. Supported by business documents and personal correspondence of partners in Russell and Company, this study seeks to provide new insights to an overall understanding of the early Sino-American relations and contribute to the current debate among diplomatic historians over the genesis of U.S. China policy.
  
  He Sibing received his PhD in history from Miami University. He has been the recipient of research grants from the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Macao and the General Administration of Press and Publication of the PRC. His research interests include Sino-Western relations and overseas Chinese studies, and his recent publications include Feilubin Huaqiao Shi (History of the Philippine Chinese, rev. and enlarged ed., Guangdong Higher Education Press, January 2009, with Huang Zisheng) and "Macao in the Making of Sino-US Relations," in Priscilla Roberts, ed., Bridging the Sino-American Divide (Cambridge Scholars, 2007). He is presently working as an independent researcher in Guangzhou, completing a monograph titled Macao in the Making of Early Sino-American Relations, 1784-1844.



• Vincent Ho (Department of History, Chinese University of Hong Kong)
  http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b105869/vho/index.html
  
  "Compradors, co-hongs and the American : a study of trading network of early Sino-American commerce"
  
  
  
  
• Yinghe Jiang (History Department, Sun Yat-sen University)
  http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b105869/vho/index.html
  
  "The Studios of Cantonese Export Painters during the Qing Dynasty"
  
  Through the middle 18th century to the middle 19th century, the Guangzhou port saw the appearance of professional painters drawing art works in western style and their studios near the Thirteen Hong(the thirteen foreign factories). Their works are defined now as "Chinese Export Paintings." As this new industry emerged under the background of the Guangzhou port, it involved more and more Sino-western exchange. The painters started to learn how to paint in the western style and make their works appeal to western customers. On the basis of the historical documents and relevant scholarship, this thesis tries to explain the reasons and the character of the appearance and change of the studios in the light of the historical transition of Guangzhou port
  
  Yinghe Jiang is assoiate professor of History Deparment at Sun Yat-sen University. His major research interest is the history of Canton trade and Cantonese export paintings. His book Western Painting and Canton Port during the Qing Period investigates the relation between them in the view of Communication History, Ideological History and Art History, and tries to explain why Guangzhou Port has played a very important role in the process of East and West cultural exchange.
  
  
• Kendall Johnson (Associate Profesor of American Literature, Swarthmore College; Fulbright Research-Lecturer, University of Hong Kong)
  https://websites.swarthmore.edu/kendalljohnson
  
  "The Speculative Romance of Early Sino-American Commerce in The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton (1847)"
  For larger versions of illustrations already included in the PDF, follow this link
  
  Hoping to first establish a reputation in China after the Revolutionary War, United States investors put their money on ginseng or jin seng. In The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton: With a Life of the Author (1847), Shaw goes so far as to suggest that the root wealth would provide immense wealth, equal to that of all the silver mines of South America. This essay considers the fascinating history of European representation of ginseng, beginning with early-eighteenth century by French Jesuit priests and continuing through Benjamin Franklin and his well-known friend, the gardener John Bartram. I argue that, in addition to its profitability, ginseng offered early Americans a way of opening up the categories of natural historical classification to admit "the American" as a new type of cultural category in the theater of global commerce.
  
  Kendall Johnson is a Fulbright Fellow visiting the University of Hong Kong for 2008-09 and teaching in the American Studies Programme. He is an Associate Professor of American Literature at Swarthmore College. His book Henry James and the Visual was recently published by Cambridge University Press and he has published essays on Native American literature. He is currently conducting research on early United States trade and diplomacy in "Canton" for his next book Speculative Democracy: Characterizing the Corporation in the American Literature before the Civil War
  
  
• Y. W. Koon (Assistant Professor, Fine Arts, University of Hong Kong)
  http://www.fa.hku.hk/staff.html
  
  "The Face of Diplomacy in 19th Century China: Qi Ying's Portrait Gifts "
  
  This paper will look at an ephemeral conjunction in Chinese diplomatic history where we see portraiture for the first time claiming a role in sustaining political relations. When Qi Ying, the Manchu official, arrived in Canton to salvage the negotiation of the Opium War treaties, he adopted social practices used by the cohong merchants to ameliorate the tense relationships of a post-war China. The portrait was part of his appeasement approach of cultivating intimate friendships in order to coerce more agreeable political and trading terms. However, the portrait in Canton also belonged to the larger export art world of commodities, souvenirs and collectibles that complicated its efficacy as a diplomatic gift. By considering the portrait as a site of interaction between artists, merchants, officials, and viewers, I will examine the object's surplus of meanings and narratives, and the tensions generated by its social intentionality and subsequent misreading.
  
  Dr. Koon teaches courses on Chinese and Japanese art history that touch on themes of cultural crossings, gender, modernity, and social politics. She was a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before taking up her position at the University of Hong Kong. Her research probes into areas of representation and identity, and marginalized arts and artists. She is currently working on a project to recover a missing chapter in Chinese art history. It will focus on early 19th century Guangdong art linking the region with 18th century Yangzhou and 19th century Shanghai.
  


• Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce (Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Hong Kong)
  and Huang Yedan (graduate student, University of Hong Kong)
  http://www.hku.hk/sociodep/flash/t08KE_Kuah.html
  
  "The Flow of Traders' Gods in Chinese Community"
  
  Within the Chinese society, every event and every action is governed by their understanding of the Chinese cosmology and their interaction with the godly and spirit beings. Thus, their cosmological understanding governed not only their socio-cultural way of life but most significantly of their economic dealings. Chinese businessmen and traders are very concerned about the intersection between godly and spiritual world and the business world. In this paper, I will explore how the various types of gods since the historical time continued to have great significance with Chinese trading community.
  
  
• Joseph Abraham Levi (Associate Professor, School of Modern Languages and Cultures University of Hong Kong)
  http://www.hku.hk/europe/leviprofile.html
  
  "America, China, and Macanese Identity in the works of Felipe B. Nery (1920-)"
  
  A California resident for over fifty years, Felipe B. Nery (1920-) is the perhaps one of the best living examples of those Macanese authors of the Diaspora who in their works best conveys an overall feeling of uneasiness as well as the bliss of assimilation to the new country, in this case, the United States. Diaspora, rejection, discrimination, assimilation, adaptation, success, and, as of late, doubts on the choices made, are some of the themes found in the (semi) autobiographical novels, essays, and poems of this soon-to-be nonagenarian diasporic filo di Macau (son of Macau).
  
  Dr. Joseph Levi holds a PhD in Romance Philology / Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a concentration in Portuguese, Italian, and Medieval Spanish. He also holds a M.A. in Portuguese and a M.A. in Italian from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Furthermore, Dr Levi holds a Laurea in Foreign Modern Languages from the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples with a concentration in Swahili, Islamic, Arabic, and African Studies, as well as a Licenciatura in Portuguese and Lusophone Studies / History of the Portuguese Discoveries, from the Universidade de Lisboa. Dr Levi's publications, teaching expertise, academic interests, and research areas cover the following areas: Portuguese and Italian language, philology, linguistics, and dialectology; Romance dialectology, philology, and linguistics; Portuguese-based Creoles; Medieval Spanish language, philology, and linguistics; Spanish dialects, linguistics, and philology; African and Islamic studies; Lusophone Africa; History, culture, and civilization of Macau; the Qur'an and the Ahadith of the Prophet Muhammad; Women Studies; Women in the Lusophone world; Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone literatures, cultures, and societies; Colonial Brazilian history, literature, and civilization; Slavery in Brazil and the Atlantic Slave Trade; Sephardic studies; the Sephardic Diaspora; Italkian (Jewish-Italian) studies; History of the Portuguese Overseas Expansion; Protestantism in the US and the Lusophone world.
  
  
• Aili Li (Associate Professor of History, Sun Yat-sen University).
  http://www.sysu.edu.cn/en/schools%20and%20departments/humanities-h1.htm
  
  "American Commissioners and Chinese Participation in Expositions held in the U.S.A"
  
  This paper takes a historical look about the Chinese exhibition at the Expositions held in America in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, including the Centennial International Exhibition (Philadelphia, 1876), Saint Louis Exposition (1884), World's Columbian Exposition (The Chicago World's Fair, 1893) and Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904, the Saint Louis World's Fair). This period is crucial for either America or China. The former was industrilizing rapidly and the latter was going towards the world hard and reluctantly. The participation of China maybe was very surprising. Her architectures, sculptures, productions, all these exhibits showed China directly to the American public, confirmed or modified their existing impression of China. However, the exhibiters of China were not Chinese but Americans and other Europeans! They were foreign commissoners in the Chinese Customs Service headed by the famous British, Sir. Robert Hart. For some reasons, Chinese government appointed them as the representations of China. These American Commissioners were charged with the design of the Chinese pavilion or section, the selection and collection of all kinds of showpiece, which of course were the most Chinese style in their eyes or were able to display Chinese life typically. This paper tries an orientalism analysis of their work. At the same time, I will discuss the American image of their Chinese fellows had been in Expositions.
  
  Aili LI holds a Ph. D and a M. A. from Sun Yat-Sen University of Guangzhou (Canton). She is an associate professor of the same University. Her book, a study on the American Commissioners in the Chinese Customs Service in late Qing, was published in 2005. Her teaching and researching interests include Sino-American relations in late Qing and the Chinese Customs Service headed by foreigners. In addition to the Chinese participation in Expositions, she is currently conducting research on the United States Court for China (1906-1943).
  
  
• Rogerio Miguel do Deserto Rodrigues de Puga (Assistant Professor of History, University of Macau)
  http://www.umac.mo/fsh/hist/Academic_Staff/Puga.html
  
  "Representations of Macao in the Unpublished Diary of Caroline Hyde Butler Laing (1837)"
  
  In 1836, the novelist Caroline Hyde Butler Laing (1804-1892) is advised, for health reasons, to travel with her first husband, Edward Butler (1797-1849), to China. She leaves New York in the Roman, a 492 tons ship which belongs to Oliphant & Company, starting a voyage that would last several months. The first phase of the adventure ends on February 5th 1837, in Macao, a city in which the diarist describes the Anglophone, Chinese and Portuguese communities, as well as the cultural and social singularities of the enclave.
  
  
• Paul A. Van Dyke (Assistant Professor of History, University of Macau)
  http://www.umac.mo/fsh/hist/
  
  "Were all those books really necessary?: The bookkeeping practices of American and European China traders compared"
  
  From the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century, international businesses have been advancing across Europe and the world, and with their expansion came a need for more sophisticated methods of organizing data. Businesses with multifaceted operations that are spread over several nations and continents need to be able to access information quickly so directors can monitor costs and analyze profits at each level of their operations. By the time Americans entered the world of international commerce at the end of the eighteenth century, the bookkeeping practices of the large East India companies had developed into massive operations, with armies of scribes keeping multiply layers of books that were cross-referenced, one to another, so products and services could be traced and tracked from beginning to end. Today, the archives of the East India companies contain some of the best and most detail information we have of life, societies, commerce, and politics in Asia. When Americans entered the China trade, however, they did not adopt any of the sophisticated accounting practices of the Europeans, despite their extensive and long history of interactions with them. And yet Americans were, on the whole, very successful. This raises the question, were all those books really necessary?
  
  Professor Van Dyke is the author of The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700-1845 (Hong Kong University Press 2005; reprint 2007). He has published many articles on different aspects of the trade in Canton and Macao, including Armenians, Muslims and the Chinese junk trade to Southeast Asia, and is presently writing new histories of the Chinese merchant families.