What roles did Americans play in the expanding global empires of the nineteenth century? Thomas M. Larkin examines the Hong Kong–based Augustine Heard & Company, the most prominent American trading firm in treaty-port China, to explore the ways American elites at once made and were made by British colonial society. Following the Heard brothers throughout their firm's rise and decline, The China Firm reveals how nineteenth-century China's American elite adapted to colonial culture, helped entrench social and racial hierarchies, and exploited the British imperial project for their own profit as they became increasingly invested in its political affairs and commercial networks.
Through the central narrative of Augustine Heard & Co., Larkin disentangles the ties that bound the United States to China and the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Drawing on a vast range of archival material from Hong Kong, China, Boston, and London, he weaves the local and the global together to trace how Americans gained acceptance into and contributed to the making of colonial societies and world-spanning empires. Uncovering the transimperial lives of these American traders and the complex ways extraimperial communities interacted with British colonialism, The China Firm makes a vital contribution to global histories of nineteenth-century Asia and provides an alternative narrative of British empire.
Acknowledgments Note on Translation and Currencies List of Abbreviations Glossary of People Glossary of Terms Introduction: An American Firm, a British Colony, and a Global Microhistory 1. A Very Profitable Crisis: Canton’s American Merchants on the Eve of the First Opium War 2. A House Is Not a Home: The American Merchant House in Hong Kong 3. Lives Lived in Public: American Encounters with British Colonial Society 4. Missed Opportunities: Balancing Metropolitan Politics and Private Interests in China 5. Friends Near and Far: Creating and Maintaining Global Networks Through Hong Kong 6. Wealth or Expertise: The Social and Professional Paths of Returned American Merchants Conclusion: Lives of Consequence Notes Bibliography Index
Thomas M. Larkin is assistant professor of the history of the United States of America and the world at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Reviews for The China Firm: American Elites and the Making of British Colonial Society
Through the microhistory of the Heards’ business in Hong Kong, The China Firm speaks to larger issues of global history. Bringing together solidly researched archival findings and applying cutting-edge techniques of digital humanities, Larkin explores the dynamic social and business networks of an enterprising New England trading house and its changing fortune within the British colonial framework. The story follows the worldly exploits of these American entrepreneurs who transcended political and geographical boundaries, all the while mindful of the local contexts that animated and confined their maneuvers. -- John D. Wong, author, <i>Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub</i>
