Once Upon A Time In 1784: American Mercantile Biographies And The Romance Of Free Trade Imperialism

Abstract

In the antebellum United States, biographical accounts of China traders helped lend the year 1784 retrospective global historical significance with implications for China’s relationship to global modernity. Life stories of American 'merchant princes' registered the promise of free trade after the US broke out of Britain’s mercantile world system during the Revolutionary War. Their biographies also registered the contradictory meanings of the phrase during the First (1839–42) and Second Opium War (1856–60) as sectional antagonism in the US led to the US Civil War. By looking at antebellum national biographies related to the China trade, this essay considers how biographers such structured their subjects’ experiences into national romances of individual accomplishment while layering meanings of free trade to distinguish the United States from European imperialism amidst the Opium Wars.