Karl Marx 


[THE ANGLO-CHINESE TREATY]” 


The unsuccessful issue, in a commercial point of view, of Sir 
Henry Pottinger’s Chinese treaty, signed on August 29, 1842, and 
dictated, like the new treaties with China, at the cannon’s mouth, 
is a fact now recollected even by that eminent organ of British 
Free Trade, the London Economist.* Having stood forward as one 
of the staunchest apologists of the late invasion of China, that 
journal now feels itself obliged to “temper” the sanguine hopes 
which have been cultivated in other quarters. The Economist 
considers the effects on the British export trade of the treaty of 1842, 
“a precedent by which to guard ourself against the result of mistaken 
operations.” This certainly is sound advice. The reasons, however, 
which Mr. Wilson alleges in explanation of the failure of the first 
attempt at forcibly enlarging the Chinese market for Western 
produce, appear far from conclusive. 

The first great cause pointed out of the signal failure is the 
speculative overstocking of the Chinese market, during the first 
three years following the Pottinger treaty, and the carelessness of 
the English merchants as to the nature of the Chinese demand. 
The English exports to China which, in 1836, amounted to 
£1,326,000, had fallen in 1842 to £969,000. Their rapid and 
continued rise during the following four years, is shown by these 
figures: 


ESE! sssritennas tcouendenraaree £969,000 = 1844 Lees £2,305,000 
LB AS) ccsslatswiniee.Seheettes 1,456,000 = 1845 oe eeeeeeeees 2,395,000 


4 Here and below see the article “The Commercial Effects of the Treaty with 
China. The Export Trade”, The Economist, No. 784, September 4, 1858.— Ed. 


The Anglo-Chinese Treaty 29 


Yet in 1846 the exports did not only sink below the level of 
1836, but the disasters overtaking the China houses at London 
during the crisis of 1847 proved the computed value of the exports 
from 1843 to 1846, such as it appears in the official return tables, 
to have by no means courespanded to the value actually realized. If 
the English exporters thus erred in the quantity, they did not less 
so in the quality of the articles offered to Chinese consumption. In 
proof of the latter assertion, The Economist quotes from. Mr. 
W. Cooke, the late correspondent of the London Times at 
Shanghai and Canton, the following passages: 


“In 1843, 1844 and 1845, when the northern ports had just been opened, the 
people at home were wild with excitement. An eminent firm at Sheffield sent out a 
large consignment of knives and forks, and declared themselves prepared to supply 
all China with cutlery. [...] They were sold at prices which scarcely realized their 
freight. A London house, of famous name, sent out a tremendous consignment of 
pianofortes, which shared the same fate. What happened in the case of cutlery and 
pianos occurred also, in a less noticeable manner, in the case of worsted and cotton 
manufactures. Manchester made a great blind effort when the ports were opened, 
and that effort failed. Since then she has fallen into an apathy, and trusts to the 
chapter of accidents.” 


Lastly, to prove the dependence of the reduction, maintenance 
or improvement of the trade, on the study of the wants of the 
consumer, The Economist reproduces from the same authority the 
following return for the year 1856: 


1845. 1846. 1856. 
Worsted Stuffs (pieces) .. 13,569 8,415 7,428 
Camllets ...........0ccccceceeeeeee 13,374 8,034 4,470 
Long ells ...........c0+ese0-0- 91,530 75,784 36,642 
Wo lens ........cccccescceneceees 62,731 56,996 38,553 
Printed Cottons ............. 100,615 81,150 281,784 
Plain Cottons ................. 2,998,126 1,859,740 2,817,624 
Cotton Twist, lbs........... 2,640,090 5,324,050 5,579,600 


Now all these arguments and illustrations explain nothing 
beyond the reaction following the overtrade of 1843-45. It is a 
phenomenon by no means peculiar to the Chinese trade, that a 
sudden expansion of commerce should be followed by its violent 
contractions, or that a new market, at its opening, should be 
choked by British oversupplies; the articles thrown upon it being 
not very nicely calculated, in regard either to the actual wants or 
the paying powers of the consumers. In fact, this is a standing 
feature in the history of the markets of the world. On Napoleon’s 
fall, after the opening of the European continent, British imports 
proved so disproportionate to the continental faculties of absorp- 


30 Karl Marx 


tion, that “the transition from war to peace” proved more 
disastrous than the continental system itself.'* Canning’s recogni- 
tion of the independence of the Spanish colonies in America, was 
also instrumental in producing the commercial crisis of 1825. 
Wares calculated for the meridian of Moscow, were then 
dispatched to Mexico and Colombia. And in our own day, 
notwithstanding its elasticity, even Australia has not escaped the 
fate common to all new markets, of having its powers of 
consumption as well as its means of payment over-stocked. The 
phenomenon peculiar to the Chinese market is this, that since its 
opening by the treaty of 1842, the export to Great Britain of tea and 
silk of Chinese produce has continually been expanding, while the 
import trade into China of British manufactures has, on the whole, 
remained stationary. The continuous and increasing balance of trade 
in favor of China might be said to bear an analogy to the state of 
commercial balance between Russia and Great Britain; but, then, in 
the latter case, everything is explained by the protective policy of 
Russia, while the Chinese import duties are lower than those of any 
other country England trades with. The aggregate value of Chinese 
exports to England, which before 1842 might be rated at about 
£7,000,000, amounted in 1856 to the sum of about £9,500,000. 
While the quantity of tea imported into Great Britain never reached 
more than 50,000,000 Ibs. before 1842, it had swollen in 1856 to 
about 90,000,000 Ibs. On the other hand, the importance of the 
British import of Chinese silks only dates from 1852. Its progress 
may be computed from the following figures: 


1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856, 
Silk imp’d. Ib. 2,418,343 2,838,047 4,576,706 4,436,862 3,723,693 
Value ........ 3 = ga 3,318,112 3,013,396 3,676,116 


Now take, on the other hand, the movement of the