The Private Eye in Old Canton

Private memoirs are among the most descriptive documents we have of individual experiences in Canton. While subjective in nature, these European eyewitness accounts offer a diversity of views and of information regarding Canton. The five individuals considered in this chapter—Robert Pitt and William Hickey, Pehr Osbeck and Pierre Poivre, and Charles de Constant—provide glimpses of the Canton Trade that are generally not found in more official records. They represent a diversity of backgrounds: two hard-living young Englishmen, two plant-collectors, one a Lutheran chaplain and the other a failed priest, and a French-Swiss of good family encountering the worst times in Canton. Their observations contribute to the larger picture of the trade, and they remind us of the variety of visions that make up the human condition, whether at home or far away. Finding additional eyewitness reports could considerably enrich our understanding of the trade and expand our interpretations of the importance of that trade. For example, from botanizing as a hobby to the great efforts to grow tea in India, we can link eighteenth-century ‘natural history’ to the new nineteenth-century phases of plantation agriculture in ways that could be of world-historical importance. Also valuable would be more mention of merchants of Middle Eastern and Indian origin doing business at Canton, especially if figures could be found on their trade.