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Author Johnson, Kendall, 1969- author.

Title The new Middle Kingdom : China and the early American romance of free trade / Kendall A. Johnson
Published Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Introduction: China and the American Romances of Free Trade -- Characterizing the American China Trader : The Global Geography of Opium Traffic in Josiah Quincy's The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw (1847) -- Captain Amasa Delano, Slavery, and Melville's Dollar Signs of the Canton Trade -- The Troubled Romance in Harriett Low's Picturesque Macao : Transnational Family Fortunes and the Rise of Russell & Company -- The Sacred Fount of the ABCFM : Free Press, Free Trade, and Extraterritorial Printing in China -- Caleb Cushing's Print Trail of Legal Extraterritoriality : A Confederated Christendom of Commerce, from the Far East to the Far West -- Extraterritorial Burial and the Visual Aesthetics of Free Trade Imperialism in Commodore Matthew Perry's Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan (1856-1857) -- Passages to India from the Newly United States : Revising The Middle Kingdom (1883)
Summary "In the imaginations of early Americans, the Middle Kingdom was the wealthiest empire in the world. Its geographical distance did not deter commercial aspirations--rather, it inspired them. Starting in the late eighteenth century, merchants from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Salem, Newport, and elsewhere cast speculative lines to China. The resulting fortunes shaped the cultural foundation of the early republic and funded westward frontier expansion. In The New Middle Kingdom, Kendall A. Johnson argues that--for the merchant princes who speculated in the global Far East, as well as the missionaries and diplomats who followed them--Manifest Destiny spurred more than the coalescence of the fractious regions into the continental Far West. It also promised a golden gateway to the Pacific Ocean through which the nation would realize its historical destiny as the world's new Middle Kingdom of commerce. Examining the influential accounts of Westerners at the center of early US cultural development abroad, Johnson conceives a romance of free trade with China as a quest narrative of national accomplishment in a global marketplace. Drawing from a richly descriptive cross-cultural archive, the book presents key moments in early relations among the twenty-first century's superpowers through memoirs, biographies, epistolary journals, magazines, book reviews, fiction and poetry by Melville, Twain, Whitman, and others, travel narratives, and treaties, as well as maps and engraved illustrations. Paying close attention to figurative language, generic forms, and the social dynamics of print cultural production and circulation, Johnson shows how authors, editors, and printers appealed to multiple overlapping audiences in China, in the United States, and throughout the world. Spanning a full century, from the post-Revolutionary War era to the Gilded Age, The New Middle Kingdom is a vivid look at the Far East through Western eyes, one that highlights the importance of China in antebellum US culture"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Free trade -- United States -- History
Merchants -- United States -- History
Printing -- Social aspects -- United States -- History
Free trade -- United States -- History -- Sources
Free trade in literature.
HISTORY -- United States -- General.
HISTORY -- Asia -- China.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Economic History.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Exports & Imports.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- International -- General.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- International -- Marketing.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- International Relations -- Trade & Tariffs.
Commerce
Free trade
Free trade in literature
Literature
Merchants
Printing -- Social aspects
Public opinion, American
Territorial expansion
SUBJECT United States -- Commerce -- China -- History -- 19th century
China -- Commerce -- United States -- History -- 19th century
China -- Foreign public opinion, American -- History -- 19th century
United States -- Territorial expansion -- History -- 19th century
China -- In literature. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85024204
Subject China
United States
Genre/Form History
Sources
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781421422527
1421422522