1 Paper presented to “A Tale of Ten Cities: Sino-American Exchange in the Treaty Port Era, 1840- 1950—An Interdisciplinary Colloquium,” Hong Kong University, 23-24 May 2011. (Rough Draft) Russell and Company in Shanghai, 1843-1891: U. S. Trade and Diplomacy in Treaty Port China Sibing He
[email protected] In his introduction to America’s China Trade in Historical Perspective, John K. Fairbank speculates that one “may find it hard to discover a material substructure adequate to account for the superstructure of religious, cultural, and strategic interests that dominated the Chinese- American relationship.” Guided by this presumption, some scholars have attempted to demonstrate "how comparatively little of a material nature was ever at stake" in the course of American approach to China.1 America's China trade, they propound, has been only tangentially important to the overall economy of both nations. These studies, however, are by no means conclusive on the subject. More concrete case studies of the trade, as Fairbank admits, are still needed in order to vindicate the conjecture that the American approach to China was "a phenomenon of the mind and spirit more than of the pocketbook." 2 Michael H. Hunt also stresses the need for case studies of prominent American firms in China, such as Russell and Company.3 1 Ernest R. May and John K. Fairbank, eds., America's China Trade in Historical Perspective: The Chinese and American Performance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 6-7. 2 May and Fairbank, America's China Trade in Historical Perspective, 7. 3 Michael H.