Whampoa and the Canton Trade recounts the lives of seamen who travelled half-way around the globe at great risk and lived through a historic period that would become the framework for subsequent encounters between China and the rest of the world. Were it not for the exchanges between the major powers and the Qing empire, the world—as we know it—would be a rather different place. Hence, Van Dyke’s command of data mining shows that Whampoa was a key pillar in the Canton System and, thus, in the making of the modern world economy.
Paul A. Van Dyke is professor of history at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, and author of Merchants of Canton and Macao: Success and Failure in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade (Hong Kong University Press, 2015).
‘Paul Van Dyke has transformed our understanding of the Canton trade. In this book, he brings his enormous knowledge of the primary sources to this study of Whampoa, the anchorage on the Pearl River used by all foreign ships when that trade was confined to the port of Canton, presenting “a view of the trade from the common seaman’s perspective.”’ —Evelyn S. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh
‘Paul A. Van Dyke wonderfully brings to life the drudgery and danger faced by the diverse men who worked the ships of the Canton trade. He skilfully fashions vivid images of the texture of their lives from danger to boredom, from illnesses and accidents to drinking and whoring.’ —R. Bin Wong, UCLA
