Sizing Up the Middle Kingdom: Western Observations on China’s Population in the Canton Trade Period

Abstract

From the mid-1700s to the end of the Opium War in 1842, Westerners in China were confined to a tiny section of the city of Canton. This encounter between China and the West is known best for leading to the Opium War. But it also generated an enormous volume of Western writings on China. Frustrated with the restrictions of the Canton System and unable to live or travel elsewhere in China, these foreigners devoted thousands of pages in memoirs, books, periodicals, and other publications to trying to understand China, its people, and their culture. This paper examines one particular aspect of this enterprise: determining the size of China's huge population, which was part of a larger project of comprehending China and which represented some of the difficulties and complications inherent in doing so. Which Chinese sources could be trusted, especially when the Qing government forbade foreigners to learn Chinese and when many Westerners believed that Chinese officials deliberately made it hard for foreigners to understand China? How reliable were accounts by European travelers, such as the members of Lord Macartney's embassy to Beijing in 1793? And those by the Jesuit missionaries, whose glowing descriptions of China often seemed to contradict what Westerners now encountered in Canton? In the face of growing publications on China in the West, often based more on speculation than on fact, determining the size of China's population also became a way to present the Western community in Canton as the true experts on China.