China Firm

What roles did Americans play in the expanding global empires of the nineteenth century? Thomas M. Larkin examines the Hong Kong–based Augustine Heard & Company, the most prominent American trading firm in treaty-port China, to explore the ways American elites at once made and were made by British colonial society. Following the Heard brothers throughout their firm’s rise and decline, The China Firm reveals how nineteenth-century China’s American elite adapted to colonial culture, helped entrench social and racial hierarchies, and exploited the British imperial project for their own profit as they became increasingly invested in its political affairs and commercial networks.Through the central narrative of Augustine Heard & Co., Larkin disentangles the ties that bound the United States to China and the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Drawing on a vast range of archival material from Hong Kong, China, Boston, and London, he weaves the local and the global together to trace how Americans gained acceptance into and contributed to the making of colonial societies and world-spanning empires. Uncovering the transimperial lives of these American traders and the complex ways extraimperial communities interacted with British colonialism, The China Firm makes a vital contribution to global histories of nineteenth-century Asia and provides an alternative narrative of British empire.

From the broad perspective of global business and international relations to the intimacy of the family and the home, Thomas M. Larkin paints a rich and nuanced picture of the American experience in China. Using the concept of "transimperial" space, he shows how American merchants lived and made money by navigating, adapting, and exploiting the British imperial presence in China. This work gives us a new understanding of the history of Sino-American relations, Hong Kong, China, and the nineteenth-century world. A wonderful read., Through the microhistory of the Heards’ business in Hong Kong, The China Firm speaks to larger issues of global history. Bringing together solidly researched archival findings and applying cutting-edge techniques of digital humanities, Larkin explores the dynamic social and business networks of an enterprising New England trading house and its changing fortune within the British colonial framework. The story follows the worldly exploits of these American entrepreneurs who transcended political and geographical boundaries, all the while mindful of the local contexts that animated and confined their maneuvers., The China Firm tells the transimperial tale of the American China trading firm Augustine Heard & Co. and their rise to prominence as copartners in the construction of British imperialism in the region. Through skillful navigation of the First and Second Opium Wars, Heard & Co. carved a lucrative—if fragile—position for itself as an intermediary in the opium trade. They moved to an outsize position of prominence in the region’s carrying trade and exerted a profound influence over the sociocultural life of British treaty-port network that stretched from the entrepôt of Hong Kong to Canton’s Thirteen Factories and the ports of Shanghai and Fuzhou. Moving deftly through the scales of the Heards’ mercantile and diplomatic household, the cities they sojourned and labored in, and the regions and empires their trade crossed, The China Firm charts the evolution of the Heards’ sinuous social and business networks in the British colonial project. Written with conceptual sophistication, storytelling panache, and impressive archival prospecting, The China Firm sets a new standard for global microhistory approaches to the history of the United States in the world., The China Firm is a pioneering global microhistory. Through a social-networking approach to the history of empire, Thomas Larkin shows how a family of American traders helped construct British imperialism in China and beyond., Through the case study of Augustine Heard & Co., Larkin sheds fascinating new light on American lives and business in Hong Kong and the wider China coast during the nineteenth century. Based on a wide array of archival sources and meticulous research, The China Firm is essential reading for those interested in foreign communities and business in modern China.

Thomas M. Larkin is assistant professor of the history of the United States of America and the world at the University of Prince Edward Island.