LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA (With especial reference to the Upper Yangtze)
A. D. BLUE*
West China, and in particular the provinces of Szechwan and Yunnan, interested British merchants in India before the end of the eighteenth century, and this interest increased after Britain got a foothold in Lower Burma in the early nineteenth century. Not until Britain was established at Shanghai and on the Lower Yangtze, however, did the British China traders take any great interest in West China. Until the 1860s, therefore, the initiative in opening West China to British trade came from the West, and concentrated on reviving the old caravan routes from Upper Burma into Yunnan. The Treaty of Yandabo between Britain and Burma in 1826, which established Britain in Arakan, Assam, Manipur, and Tenasserim, rekindled interest in these old routes. Sino-Burmese contacts went back many centuries, but were usually recorded from a diplomatic or military aspect, although it was well known that there had been considerable trade along these routes. At this time Canton was the only British foothold on the China coast, and the much shorter land route across Burma seemed to offer many benefits to British and Indian merchants in both India and Burma. Then, and for many years afterwards, India was the source of most of China's foreign imports, cotton and opium in particular, and much of British policy in the Far East was concerned with maintaining and extending this trade.
An interesting side product of this China-India relationship was the proposal to import workers from west China for the infant Assam tea industry. The East India Company had become interested in the possibility of tea production in Assam as early as 1823, when indigenous tea plants were found in the Upper Brahmaputra
* The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtze in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Five of his articles have been published previously in the Journal. "European Navigation on the Yangtze" in Vol. 3, 1963, "Piracy on the China Coast" in Vol. 5, 1965, "The China Coasters" in Vol. 7, 1967, "Chinese Emigration and the Deck Passenger Trade" in Vol. 10, 1970 and "Early Steamships in China" in Vol. 13, 1973.
Plates 20-25 and the sketch-maps at the end of the volume illustrate this article.
LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA (With especial reference to the Upper Yangtze)
A. D. BLUE*
West China, and in particular the provinces of Szechwan and Yunnan, interested British merchants in India before the end of the eighteenth century, and this interest increased after Britain got a foothold in Lower Burma in the early nineteenth century. Not until Britain was established at Shanghai and on the Lower Yangtze, however, did the British China traders take any great interest in West China. Until the 1860s, therefore, the initiative in opening West China to British trade came from the West, and concentrated on reviving the old caravan routes from Upper Burma into Yunnan. The Treaty of Yandabo between Britain and Burma in 1826, which established Britain in Arakan, Assam, Manipur, and Tenas- serim, rekindled interest in these old routes. Sino-Burmese con- tacts went back many centuries, but were usually recorded from a diplomatic or military aspect, although it was well known that there had been considerable trade along these routes. At this time Canton was the only British foothold on the China coast, and the much shorter land route across Burma seemed to offer many benefits to British and Indian merchants in both India and Burma. Then, and for many years afterwards, India was the source of most of China's foreign imports, cotton and opium in particular, and much of British policy in the Far East was concerned with maintaining and extending this trade.
An interesting side product of this China-India relationship was the proposal to import workers from west China for the infant Assam tea industry. The East India Company had become interest- ed in the possibility of tea production in Assam as early as 1823, when indigenous tea plants were found in the Upper Brahmaputra
* The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtse in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Five of his articles have been published previously in the Journal. "European Navigation on the Yangtse" in Vol. 3, 1963, "Piracy on the China Coast" in Vol. 5, 1965, "The China Coasters" in Vol. 7, 1967, "Chinese Emigration and the Deck Passenger Trade" in Vol. 10, 1970 and "Early Steamships in China" in Vol. 13, 1973.
Plates 20-25 and the sketch-maps at the end of the volume illustrate this article.
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