The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton Before Treaty Days 1825-1844

Hunter, William C., 1812-1891Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.3
Word count
273K words
Chapters
28

Tags

English Originals Modern and Contemporary China Treaty PortsSocial ObservationTrade HistoryDocumentary NarrativeEast-West ExchangeCross-Cultural ViewModern China

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton Before Treaty Days 1825-1844 by William C. HunterAuthor: Hunter, William C., 1812-1891,Language: English, Class: DS: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Asia, Release Date: May 10, 2013

Editor's review

This book is eyewitness Hunter's memoir of the Canton trading port from 1825 to 1844, focusing on Sino-foreign trade and daily interaction before the Opium War. Its core value lies in first-hand observation: details of life in the Thirteen Factories district, dealings between foreign merchants and the Cohong, modes of communication under language barriers, and the operating logic of the old order before the treaty system arrived. The author traded in Canton for many years, and his narrative carries a personal perspective rather than scholarly macro-analysis; readers can see the concrete people and scenes behind institutions. The text is nineteenth-century English, with long sentences and dense proper names, requiring some patience. It is suitable as supplementary material for research on modern Sino-foreign relations, Canton port history, and trade history, and also as selected reading for readers interested in the memory of old Canton. It can be read alongside relevant general histories, placing personal memoir within a larger historical context and avoiding mistaking a single perspective for the whole picture.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the introduction or preface first to understand the author's identity and the period of writing, then proceed to the main text
  2. Keep pen and paper ready to mark personal names, factory names, and years, and consult background materials as needed
  3. Read alongside general histories of the periods before and after the Opium War, distinguishing personal memoir from historical framework
  4. Read selectively by theme—trade, social life, language communication—rather than page by page from start to finish

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28

FAQ

Is this book suitable for general readers without a history background? It can be read, but requires some patience. The book involves many personal names, factory names, and trade terms, and the English is in a nineteenth-century style. General readers can first read chapters of interest alongside relevant general histories or background materials, and need not force themselves to read from beginning to end.
How does it differ from general histories of the Opium War? It offers an eyewitness perspective on port life before the treaty system took shape, emphasizing daily interaction, life in the factories district, and trade details rather than a macro-narrative of the course of the war or diplomatic negotiations. It is suitable as supplementary material beyond general histories, for seeing the concrete people and scenes behind institutions.
What background knowledge should one prepare before reading? It is best to first understand the basic outlines of the Thirteen Factories, the single-port Canton trade, the opium trade, and the treaty system, and to know that the author traded in Canton for many years. This background helps readers judge the limits of the book's personal observations and avoid taking one account as complete history.

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About the author

Hunter, William C., 1812-1891 Author

William C. Hunter (1812–1891) was an American merchant who traded in Canton in the first half of the nineteenth century and was one of the earlier English-language authors to describe, from personal experience, the foreign trade and social conditions in Canton before the Opium War. His representative work, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton Before Treaty Days 1825–1844, takes as its title the Cantonese term for foreigners and recalls the factory life, Sino-foreign contacts, and trading practices at the Canton port before the treaties were signed, partaking of the nature of both memoir and historical notes. Because public information is limited, the details of his life are difficult to establish with certainty, yet the book, by preserving firsthand observations of the Thirteen Factories and foreign merchant activity before the opening of the five treaty ports, has long been cited by scholars studying early Sino-American trade and the history of the Canton port, and remains an important reference for understanding contact between China and the West in that period.