[somedudetbh]

Not a historian but possible other weird thing:

"(Bonus question: what did the U.S. give to China in exchange for its china?)" "(the answer to the question I posed above about what the U.S. traded to China in the 19th century is "fur")"

My understanding is that in this period, the most valuable China->US exports were tea, silk, and porcelain. The USA didn't produce anything the Chinese were interested in buying (unlike the Spanish, who had had torrents of silver coming from South American silver mines), and so British and American traders in the Canton System and Thirteen Factories period traded opium from British India to China, which of course led to the Opium Wars, British control of Hong Kong, etc.

I've never read anything about fur exports from USA to China being a big part of 19th century USA trade, but I have read a about mid-19th century booming East Coast and European demand for beaver pelts.

[thedogeye]

The answer to the bonus question is opium. In particular the Forbes family (not related to the magazine folks) traded about 20% of all the opium sold in China during this period with the other 80% coming from the British East India Company and other UK-based trading houses.

Fun fact, the Forbes family is still one of the wealthiest families in America, they own their own massive private island called Naushon Island right next to Martha's Vineyard. They also have their own family museum in Boston where you can learn about their trading history in Asia which I'm super eager to visit And the patriarch of the Forbes Family today is... wait for it... John Kerry. When Obama made Kerry his secretary of state the Chinese weren't super thrilled, they have a long memory.

[thedogeye]

Source for this is a book called Barons of the Sea: https://www.amazon.com/Barons-Sea-Worlds-Fastest-Clipper/dp/...

Great book if you're interested in America's history in large scale drug dealing.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

(that was interesting, thank you)

> wealthiest families

The role of families in history is sadly under-reported.

I'll bet a lot of interesting stuff would come up if that angle were properly mined.

Probably hard to get funding for it, though.

[jazzyjackson]

FDR's grandpa also got rich trading opium. Great article here: "How Profits From Opium Shaped 19th-Century Boston"

https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/31/opium-boston-history

[cossatot]

Fur exports from North America to China were the major reason for the European exploration of western North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, and into the earliest 19th century. The Chinese elite used fur pelts to line their robes. Sea otter, which has the highest follicle density of any mammal, was the most favored (and I believe imperially mandated for the highest ranking mandarins) and the pelts were incredibly valuable. The Spanish and English exploration of the Pacific Northwest was largely done by trade expeditions which would trade various goods for pelts with the various Native tribes, and then sail to Canton to trade the pelts for Chinese goods. The Russians more or less enslaved some of the tribes of the Aleutians (the Unangan people) and brought them as far south as central California in their trade ships; the Unangan hunters hunted from sea kayaks by day.

Both the North West Company (British) and John Jacob Astor (US) set up transcontinental overland trade networks in the late 18th and early 19th century focused on the fur trade, with China being a primary customer for pelts.

I think in the first few decades of the 19th century, Chinese Imperial fashions changed and much of this system collapsed, although not fast enough to prevent the near-eradication of the sea otter population.

A good pop history of the US Overland component is Astoria by Peter Heller. It is also addressed a bit in more scholarly work such as the Columbia's River: Voyages of Robert Gray, by J. Richard Nokes.

[MichaelZuo]

That’s fascinating I never considered before what the fur traders out west were doing. That’s an aspect of history left unexamined usually.

[Projectiboga]

America exported things to China in the 19th century. One random example is many rickshaws used in Asia back then were made in Burlington NJ. New Jersey built up a huge light industrial base over the 17th & 18th centuries as they were the initial colonial iron source. They also had a special surface water high in tannic acid which was key to successful transoceanic navigation. That water stayed clean. So even as those two industries declined they had plenty of timber and steel machinery to make into finished products which were easy to ship on the rivers from there to the ports on the Delaware river.

[pacman2]

I don't know about the Panama Canal, but the rest is true (mainly UK).

" ... transporting porcelain and whatever other goods China exported at the time."

China exported Silk, porcelain and tea like the is no tomorrow but did not buy anything. At one point China accumulated a huge part of the world silver reserves, sucking liquidity out of the western economy. Opium "solved" this problem.

It was my understanding that the Opium trade was mainly a GB thing. I was not aware that the US was involved.

[jazzyjackson]

You may be interested in this article, "How Profits From Opium Shaped 19th-Century Boston" [0]

> Perkins' ships deposited tremendous wealth in Boston too. Chests of tea, bolts of silk, crates of porcelain and cakes of opium -- which was legal in the U.S. -- were hauled off ships onto giant scales outside Boston’s Custom House. The goods were tallied and taxed in basements and warehouses around Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. Tax revenue from the trade funded Massachusetts police and fire departments, roads, bridges, courthouses and schools.

[0] https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/31/opium-boston-history

[simonh]

That wasn't a new problem, the Roman Empire was stripped of gold to pay for Chinese silks, to the point that several emperors made wearing silk illegal.