Independence Seaport Museum presents Seeking Profit and Power: Philadelphia, China Trade, and the Making of America

The first China voyage was underway even before Adams made his recommendation. Just five months after war’s end, in 1784, the ship Empress of China departed New York for Guangzhou (Canton), China’s center of trade. Captained by Philadelphian John Green and a crew of about 40, it was the first vessel to make the daunting, 15-month round trip.

Confronting 8,000 miles of ocean

Later expeditions departing Philadelphia sailed down the Delaware River and exited Delaware Bay at Cape May. Crossing the Atlantic, ships rounded the tip of Africa and sailed through the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, with nothing more than simple instruments, landmarks, and the stars to guide them. An undated sailor’s journal is open to a horizontal drawing of coastal formations, what might have been seen from a crow’s nest.

Seafaring promised adventure for young men like Cornelius van Buskirk (1776-1863), but first came navigational study. Van Buskirk’s striking workbook is open to a delicate watercolor of a barque facing a page of elegant script and orderly “Traverse Sailing” calculations, similar to the math problems in which “Two trains leave Chicago...”.

George Robert Bonfield’s Ship Monongahela of Philadelphia Laying to in a Hard Gale (1851) depicts the audacity of confronting 8,000 miles of open ocean. The image, of a ship struggling against the elements at a 45-degree angle, can induce queasiness on sight.

Your most serene Burgomeister

Among several period documents is a letter of introduction to “the Empire of China from Congress of Confederation of the United States.” Dated January 13, 1784, it’s a Declaration-sized page of impeccable longhand. (Did no one in the 18^th century have poor handwriting?) However, the letter’s phrasing belies its confident appearance.

The salutation contains enough flattering adjectives for a 2026 cabinet meeting: “Most serene, high, illustrious, noble, honorable, venerable, wise, and prudent...”. This supremely obsequious greeting is addressed to every possible variety of potentate: “Emperors, Kings, Dukes, Earls, Burgomeisters, Chancellors, and Regents” (Burgomeisters?). The message reveals Congress’s awareness of the United States’ inexperience in international relations and how important it was to establish relations with China independent of Great Britain.

Crew members’ letters speak to the physical enormity of circumnavigating the globe in the 18th and 19th centuries. When John M. Whitall’s Christmas Eve letter of 1827, a single sheet folded inward to form an envelope and sealed in wax, was delivered to his father at 237 Race Street in Philadelphia, it was as much a miracle as a moon landing.

Chinese goods, American imagery

Initially, goods imported from China were luxury items that only the wealthy could afford, such as hand-painted porcelain and silk. An exquisite punchbowl (c. 1784), which may have returned on the Empress, perches on a mirror, the better to appreciate the bright village scene decorating its exterior. The plain interior bears a small ship sailing under the American flag.

How did the stars and stripes get there? Many Americans brought images to Chinese porcelain producers, so that pieces could be customized, and the symbols they chose trace the formation of the new nation’s visual identity. Samuel Shaw (1754-1794), supercargo on the Empress, provided the insignia of the Society of the Cincinnati, an association of Continental Army officers. George Washington, a founding member, owned a dinner plate with the design.

As supercargo, Shaw oversaw all selling, purchasing, and receiving of goods. The Empress of China was a profitable venture, earning as much as a 30 percent profit for investors, most of whom were wealthy Philadelphians.

All the tea in China

Those sailing to China often filled private and public roles. Merchant Rodney Fisher (1798-1863) served as an unofficial US consul in Canton from 1825 to 1827. A ruby silk shawl he purchased for his wife Eliza hangs in the exhibit.

More than shimmering silk, ivory fans, or lacquer sewing boxes, Americans wanted tea. They had, in part, fought a war to obtain it without exorbitant British taxes. Early on, tea represented 90 percent of the United States’ China trade. Chinese tea remained a valued commodity a century later, when it was featured in the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Glass vials of tea leaves from the celebration are on view, as is A Tea Hong of Canton (19th century), a depiction of workers negotiating sales, packing leaves, and loading crates.

Hongs were dormitory-like buildings where China required traders to reside during trading season. Out of season, they were to stay in Macao, then a Portuguese colony. The exhibit explains that “Chinese law dictated every step of a foreign ship’s progress from the mouth of the Pearl River to Canton.”

The dark side of international trade

American exports included Ginseng root, animal furs, sandalwood, and hard currency (Spanish silver dollars). Along the way, ships stopped to resupply and add cargo, in ports such as Cape Town, then a Dutch colony, and Smyrna, in what is now Türkiye, where opium, a lucrative commodity, was available. Profiting from the addictive plant presented a moral dilemma that caused a few, but not most, merchants to eschew trading opium.

American enslavers benefitted from the China trade, hiring out enslaved workers to ships. Benjamin Chew Wilcocks (1776-1845), a merchant, supercargo, and US consul from 1820 to 1827, traveled with David, a Black man likely enslaved by his uncle Benjamin Chew, Jr. (1722-1810), who served as chief justice of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court and was patriarch to one of Philadelphia’s largest slave-holding families.

The Revolution was just the beginning

Profit and Power portrays a nation creating itself on the fly. More than merchants and cargo, trading ships carried the ambition of an upstart nation to grow its economy, cultivate respect, and join the nations of the world. Then, as now, those aspirations were tempered by reality and challenged by greed and inequality. Two-and-a-half centuries on, the United States still pursues progress as it struggles against these human flaws.

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