The Making of a Special Relationship: Houqua and His American Business Partners in the Early Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Through the lens of the prominent Chinese merchant Houqua, this talk explores the growth of Sino-American trade into a sustainable business in the early nineteenth century. His partnership with select American merchants allowed Houqua to maintain a complex balance between his commercial interests and those of his Western counterparts, all in an era of transnationalism before the imposition of the Western world order. The success of this early Sino-American alliance in configuring its networks in the fluid context of the early nineteenth century remains instructive today, as the contemporary balance of political power renders the imposition of a West-centric world system increasingly problematic, and requires international traders to adapt to a new world order in which China, once again, occupies centre stage.