Early Pacific Connections and the Problem of Commercial Fantasy

Much of our standard narrative of American trade connecting to China and the Pacific Basin before the California Gold Rush rests heavily on a relative handful of sources. Scholars have tended to repeat the assumptions that the participants in the so-called “Old China Trade” made about the mechanics and profitability of the enterprise. These commercial fantasies created problems both for the Americans engaged in early Pacific trade and for historians studying them. The main problem for the actors involved is that they imagined that trade with China would be more straightforward and predictably profitable than it was. Load a ship with a desirable commodity (like fur seal skins), sail to China and make a trade, and return home to a handsome profit. The problem for historians is that we too often treat the merchants’ fantasies as though they described reality. Historians have come to view the swashbuckling memoir of seal hunting sea captain Benjamin Morrell as fantastical (especially in its racialized descriptions of Pacific Islanders), but have left its description of the underlying China trade unchallenged. In the case of a similar memoirist, Edmund Fanning, historians have tended to take him at his word on all fronts. Some of the commercial fantasy in his book reflected his conviction that trade with China ought to be profitable. Troublingly, and seemingly unknown to most historians who have used his two memoirs as sources, his writing also contained intentional inventions and omissions designed to make his business reality appear to have matched his commercial fantasy.