Canadian Transport Sourcebook

3

CHINESE INFLUENCE ON EUROPE

CATHAY, now better known as China, still shone as a lodestar to the European fortune-hunter. The Portuguese monopoly of the trade with the Orient by way of the Cape of Good Hope had been successfully challenged by French, Dutch and English in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and the East India Company, chartered in her last years by Queen Elizabeth, established factories, forts, harbours and eventually dominion in India which enabled British merchants to build up a prosperous trade with China. The East Indiamen sailed into the docks at Deptford laden with silks and tea, a leaf which brought to England her now national beverage. The popularity of silk in sixteenth century Europe for hose and doublets was due, according to Fynes Morrison, to its efficacy as a preventive against lice.

Tea-drinking was introduced into England by Catherine of Braganza, consort of Charles II, who brought as part of her dowry trading privileges for the British at Portuguese concessions in the East Indies, and incidentally, Macao. Hence the verse of Edmund Wailer, a commissioner of trade as well as a Court poet:

"The best of Queens and best of herbs we owe
To that bold nation who the way did show
To the fair region where the sun doth rise,
Whose rich productions we so justly prize."

"In respect of its scarceness and dearness, it hath been only used as a regalia in high treatments and entertainments, and presents made thereof to Princes and Grandees."

Catherine of Braganza whose dowry gave the British entrée into Pacific ports
From a painting by Sir Peter Lely.

"Here Thou, great Anna, whom these Realms obey,

Dost sometimes Counsel take, and sometimes Tea."

—From The Rape of the Lock,
Alexander Pope.

"Teal thou soft, thou sober, sage and venerable liquid; thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wink-tippling cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moments of my life, let me fall prostrate."

Tartar Wall at Peking.

Dating from the third century B.C.

Flower Pagoda at Canton.

Dating from the sixth century A.D.

Native Village in Hawaii.

Formerly known as the Sandwich Islands.

From a drawing by J. Webber in Cook's Third Voyage, 1784.

Sea Otter.

Another Chinese product which vastly influenced European taste was porcelain, and the vessels trading with China—Dutch, Portuguese, French and English—brought crates upon crates of ginger jars, bowls, vases, and what not, exquisite in their glazes and designs, and providing material for European potteries to imitate. Here were revealed the opalescent glazes of the Sung dynasty, ante­ceding Kublai Khan himself, in shades of lavender, red, blue, purple and black; blue and white, blood red and egg-shell porcelains of the Ming dynasty; pictorial and plum blossom jars of the K'ang-hsi period; rose-tinted vases with the tea dust glaze of the reign of K'ien-lung. William of Orange's Queen Mary had brought from Holland the fashion of Chinese ornaments, and made every Duchess envious of her tea-set of China cups without handles. It was a severe test that Alexander Pope set for the composure of a perfect lady, that she should remain "mistress of herself, though China fall."

The English potters must have been waiting at the docks for the six hundred ton East Indiamen to unload their porcelain treasures from China, for we find the wares of Bow, Chelsea and Worcester factories of the mid-eighteenth century closely imitating Chinese ware. The pottery at Stratford-le-bow, in East London, owned by Weatherby and Crowther, was known as New Canton. Worcester favoured Chinese blue and white in this early period. At Plymouth a porcelain was made from Devonshire clay on a Chinese recipe.

Queen Anne who set the fash­ion of Chinoiseries in England
From a painting by Charles Boit.

Chinoiseries were all the fashion. The vogue for these came originally from France, where we find Antoine Watteau making Chinese decorations for the King's Château de la Muette near Paris. Chippendale designed a Chinese bedroom for Claydon House, and introduced carved tracery and geometrical latticework of Chinese pattern into his furniture. Sir William Chambers designed buildings of Chinese architecture for Augusta, Princess Dowager of Wales, at Kew Gardens, of which the pagoda still remains. He wrote a dissertation on Oriental gardening in which he preached the gospel of Chinese landscape. The Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, evidently had a taste for Chinese pagodas, for he had several of them built in the garden at Halifax, when he came to reside in Nova Scotia in 1796. The "Chinese House" was a popular pavilion at Ranelagh Gardens.

The desire to visit China affected even the great Dr. Samuel Johnson. According to Boswell

"He talked with an uncommon animation of travelling into distant countries. He expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting the wall of China. I catched it for the moment, and said I really believed I should go and see the wall of China had I not children, of whom it was my duty to take care. 'Sir,' said he, 'by doing so, you would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected on them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of China; I am serious, Sir.'"

Oliver Goldsmith entertained the town vastly with his "Chinese Letters" written at a guinea a time for the Public Ledger. In these a Chinese traveller takes off the London of his day (1760) by comparison with his own country.

"The furniture, frippery and fireworks of China, have long been fashionably bought up, I'll try the fair with a small cargo of Chinese morality."

"The streets of Nankin are sometimes strewn with gold leaf; very different are those of London; in the midst of their pavement a great lazy puddle moves muddily along.... A leaf of political instruction is served up every morning with tea to the Englishman."

Dutch East Indiaman of the seventeenth century

"I have got twenty things from China that are of no use in the world. Look at these jars, they are of the right pea-green... pray, Sir, examine the beauties of that Chinese temple at the foot of the garden ." She took Lien Chi "through several rooms, all furnished, as she told me, in the Chinese manner; sprawling dragons, squatting pagodas, and clumsy mandarins were stuck upon every shelf."

Nikou

Drawn by Boucher from the mural painted by Antoine Watteau for a Château of Louis XV.

The long purses of the burghers drawing forty per cent from their shares in the Dutch East India Company, trading particularly with China, Java and the Spice Islands, developed the shipbuilding craft which made Holland one of the great naval powers of Europe in the seventeenth century and filled the cities of the Zuyder Zee with stately buildings. In the eighteenth century it was the lavish ostentation of the nabobs of John Company in London that brought home to Englishmen the immense wealth of India and China. These were the nouveaux riches of their time, buying their way into society and public life. William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, was voicing widespread opinion when he said in 1770:

"For some years past there has been an influx of wealth into this country which has been attended with many fatal consequences, because it has not been the regular, natural product of labour and industry. The riches of Asia have been poured upon us, and have brought with them not only Asiatic luxury, but, I fear, Asiatic principles of Government. Without connections, without any interest in the soil, the importers of foreign gold have forced their way into Parliament by such a torrent of private corruption as no private hereditary fortune can resist."

Captain James Cook
From the painting by Dance in Greenwich Hospital.

In 1793 the British Government thought to help improve trade relations with the Chinese by sending an embassy under Earl McCartney to the Emperor K'ien-lung at Peking. This Manchu potentate received the Ambassador politely, spending eight hundred thousand dollars on entertainment and presents. But a shiver went through Downing Street when the translation of his reply to King George III was read:

"You, O King, live beyond the confines of many seas, nevertheless, impelled by your humble desire to partake of the benefits of our civilization, you have dispatched a mission respectfully bearing your memorial.... I have perused your memorial; the earnest terms in which it is couched reveal a respectful humility on your part, which is highly praiseworthy. In consideration of the fact that your Ambassador and his deputy have come a long way with your memorial and tribute, I have shown them high favor and have allowed them to be introduced into my presence. To manifest my indulgence, I have entertained them at a banquet and made them numerous gifts.... As to your entreaty to send one of your nationals to be accredited to my Celestial Court and to be in control of your country's trade with China, this request is contrary to all usage of my dynasty and cannot possibly be entertained."

While the French fur traders were forging west, the Hudson's lay Company men were sitting in their forts waiting for the Indians to bring in their pelts. This they did quite successfully, to the great profit of their directors, who salved their conscience in regard to the Northwest Passage by sending James Knight with two vessels in 1719 "to discover gold and other valuable commodities to the Northward" and equipped him with iron-bound chests to hold the gold dust. As the vessels never returned, a relief expedition was sent, under John Scruggs, who took black whales as evidence that there was continuous water from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Interest in the Northwest Passage was renewed through a campaign by an Irishman, Arthur Dobbs, which resulted in x745 in a government offer of twenty thousand pounds reward to the discoverer. Dobbs organised expeditions of his own while flaying the Hudson's Bay Company for its apparent indifference to exploration. This attack led to the expedition of Anthony Hendry to the Red Deer River, in 1754 and to the dispatch fifteen years later of Samuel Hearne, to discover the source of copper brought by Indians to the fort on Churchill River and incidentally "to clear up the point respecting a passage out of Hudson Bay into the Western Ocean." Hearne placed on the map the Coppermine River, with its outlet on the Arctic Sea, and proved to his own satisfaction that there was no Northwest Passage through Hudson Bay. In x774, Hearne established Cumberland Fort, on the Saskatchewan River, the fourth inland trading post built to compete with the invading Montreal fur traders. Two years later the reward offered by the British Government for the discovery of a Northwest Passage was extended to apply to ships exploring from the Pacific Ocean and to ships of the Royal Navy. This offer provided Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, with the excuse for sending Captain Cook in the Resolution and Captain Clarke in the Discovery on the historic voyage to the North Pacific which paved the way for British supremacy in these waters and gave the name of Sandwich Islands for a while to Hawaii.

Earlier in this same century, Vitus Bering, a Dane in the service of Peter the Great, had discovered that a strait separated Russia from the northwestern corner of America, and in 1742 followed up this discovery by surveying the coast and islands of what is now known as Alaska, but which for a considerable time came to be known as Russian America, as the Russians established forts at strategic points so as to control the fur trade in the northern Pacific. Bering died on this expedition, but the Straits have immortalised his name.

Japanese Map of the World brought to Europe in 1693 by Engelbrecht Kaempfer.