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| Eric Jay Dolin, photo by Kimberly Drooks Photography |
Eric Jay Dolin's most recent book is When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail. His other books include Fur, Fortune, and Empire, Leviathan, and Snakehead. He has worked in the environmental policy field, including for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Marine Fisheries Service. He lives in Marblehead, Mass.
Q: How did you first get
interested in writing about the early relationship between the United States
and China?
A: It was a combination of things.
My last book was Fur, Fortune, and Empire, and there was a chapter about the sea
otter trade between the U.S. and China. … I thought there must be a broader
relationship.
That was combined with the vast
coverage of China in today’s press. I thought people were focusing so much
attention on the current relationship, there was [also] so much fascinating
material on the early relationship.
Q: How does your research help to
understand the relationship today between the U.S. and China?
A: I grappled with that a lot. The
book ends in the 1860s, and there’s a lot of history between then and now. The
number of direct lessons are not that great. But…there are a lot of things
going on then that are still going on today. The lack of understanding of the
Chinese people, the stereotyping that is still going on. There was a trade
deficit then; it was hard to understand what the Chinese wanted beside our
silver, so we had a massive trade deficit.
The dream people had was that [China]
would be a great avenue and cause American trade to boom; that didn’t happen
then. It’s the same dream people have today, that this enormous country will
[provide] a boom time for America. In the mid-1800s, China was the largest
country in the world, but it was a very poor country. Today, it’s much larger,
and it’s still a very poor country with a small group of wealthy [people].
Another lesson is the impact of
the Opium Wars. Americans know very little about that, but it was seared into
the consciousness of the Chinese: Western aggression--though not American
aggression--and a period when China was buffeted and was pushed around by the
West.
As a result of that history, the
Chinese people and the Chinese government are still very sensitive to the times
when the West tries to dictate outcomes. They remember the long history of
being under the thumb of the Western powers. It drives them to want to become
the world’s largest economy.
Q: Can you tell us more about what
each country actually knew about the other in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries?
A: What Americans knew about China
came from reports from traders, and books written by Europeans. Americans knew
that Chinese culture had been very rich and that it was a proud and great
nation, but the view of the Americans was that the grand era of China had
passed and that the country was going through a decline.
Americans’ personal interactions
with the Chinese were through trading; they saw only a small sliver. … They
often saw some of the poorest parts, the opium dens. Some traders tried to
cheat, and that contributed to a very negative view that Americans had of China.
It was in line with the Western view of being superior.
There were some Americans who
traveled more widely and realized that [China] still was a great country. These
people viewed them as meritorious in many ways. They brought back Chinese
goods. Missionaries [although they were trying to convert the Chinese], still
would write in very positive ways about Chinese culture. While they were
putting down their [the Chinese] cultural and religious outlook, they also
wanted readers back home to know about their values.
For the Chinese, when the
Americans first got there, they [the Chinese] thought they were English. They
didn’t know a lot, nor did they care to. They viewed the West as trading
partners. The Chinese view was that they were the Middle Kingdom….they were beneath
heaven, and beneath them were all the other countries in the world.
It was a very condescending view
that the Chinese had of foreigners in general. At the same time, the Americans
had a very condescending view of the Chinese. It was mutual condescension.
Today, do Americans know a lot about Chinese culture? No. … There’s still a
gulf that separates us.
Q: What surprised you the most in
the course of your research?
A: Almost everything surprised me.
I didn’t know much about the relationship to begin with; I was learning it
while writing it.
What surprised me the most was the
extent to which opium had a huge impact on Chinese society, and the Americans
showed no willingness to abide by the regulations in the trafficking of opium.
There are parallels to today’s drug culture and wars. When money’s on the line,
people are willing to do things that in hindsight are not noble or legal. The
opium traffic, and the Opium Wars, dramatically changed the relationship
between the West and China.
Also, I was surprised to see how
the desire to get goods [affected the environment]. My background is in
environmental issues, and I’m very interested in learning about how the drive
to get more sea otter pelts, sealskins—it occurred repeatedly—the profit
motives were leading people to take actions that have had a very dramatic and
negative impact on natural resources. By taking resources…they lost an
opportunity to continue trading, but they were not concerned about the
degradation of the environment.
Q: What role did tea play in the
dynamic between the two countries?
A: It was enormous. Tea was the
number one item that Westerners wanted to get out of China. America had been
part of England, and the English were besotted by tea, and that love of tea was
transported [to the colonies]. By the time of the Revolution, America was
already a tea-drinking country.
Throughout the entire period I
talk about, the number one import from China to the U.S. was tea. Tea was the
driving force behind almost all the activities on the American side to keep
trade going. …
Also, this was the era of the
clipper ships, the need for speed—it largely grew out of the desire to get tea
back to the United States as quickly as possible. Without tea, the relationship
between the West and the East would have been dramatically different.
Britain was the [Western] country
with the greatest impact on China, and its number one import was tea as well.
Q: How did you find all the
illustrations used in the book?
A: It was a combination of things.
There was a lot written about the China trade in articles and books. I found a
number of images in my research. Also, I live one town over from Salem, where
the Peabody Essex Museum is. The captains of Salem were very involved in the
China trade, and brought back artwork from China. Those are now owned by the
museum. I was able to get a lot of images there. …
It’s good and bad—the good part is
that there are so many fantastic [images]. The bad part is that there are so
many more that I couldn’t use. … It’s an embarrassment of riches.
Q: Are you working on another book
now?
A: I’m trying to come up with a
topic; there are a couple of topics I’m bouncing around.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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