Professional Documents
Culture Documents
- 300s BC: Aristotle writes about a woman who weaves silk to make garments,
implying the early silk trade between Europe and China.
- 1757: The Chinese Emperor confines all foreign trade to Canton.
- February 22nd, 1784: Captain John Green sets sail on the American ship
Empress of China, the first American ship to sail to Canton, crossing the Atlantic and
sailing east to Asia.
- 1785 - 1814: over 300 American ships make a total of 618 commercial voyages
to Canton
- 1787-1790: The ship Columbia becomes the first American ship to
circumnavigate the globe.
- August, 1799: The East India Maritime Society is established in Salem. It will
later become the Peabody-Essex Museum and Historical Society.
- 1802: The New American Practical Navigator, a seafaring and nautical
informational book that is still widely used by mariners, commonly known as a
Bowditch (written by Nathaniel Bowditch) is first published.
- 1808: Jeffersons trade embargo meant to punish French & British by
disallowing all foreign trade, actually hurts American & Chinese trade
Punqua Wingchong incident
- December 24, 1814: The Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812, marks the
beginning of a new era in American/Chinese trade
- 1821:
- January-February: The ship Hero, captained by Nathaniel
Palmer, travels far south for seal skins and stumbles across Antarctica.
- September: the ship Emily affair occurs, in which Francis
Terranova is accused of drowning a Chinese pottery saleswoman, increasing
foreign and Chinese tensions.
- 1822:
- The mountain island of Lintin begins to be used by the British and
Americans as a trading port for opium when it is not allowed in Canton.
- November: The great fire in Canton wipes out countless Chinese
and foreign factories and other businesses.
- 1829:
- May 29: Harriet Low arrives in Macao as a companion for her
sickly aunt and her merchant uncle William Henry Low; one of the only foreign
women to be allowed in, she also sneaks into Canton and observes conditions
for women, keeping detailed diaries and accounts of her travels
- The ship Glide has an infamous and violent encounter with natives
in Fiji.
- Chang and Eng, two conjoined twins, come to America as part of
a show.
- 1820s: Little to no sandalwood tree trade in Hawaii due to an exhaustion of labor
and resources.
- 1830s: The fur seal skin trade has essentially shrunk to nothing due to the killing
of most fur seals; they have become too scarce to hunt reliably.
- 1834: