The China Firm: Elite Americans and the Making of British Colonial Society

How do we understand the position of Americans in the expanding global empires of the nineteenth century? They can be found everywhere in the records, but are almost invisible in the literature. The China Firm addresses this problem through a study of the men and women involved in the most prominent and important American trading firm in treaty-port China: Augustine Heard & Company. The book follows the Heard brothers throughout their firm’s rise and decline to explore the ways Americans participated in the British imperial mission in China. The China Firm argues that through their participation Americans made and were made by colonial society, helping cement social and racial hierarchies as they exploited colonial systems for their own profit and became increasingly invested in the British imperial project, its political affairs, and its commercial networks.

Drawing upon a vast range of archival material from Hong Kong, China, Boston, and London, The China Firm advances an innovative global-microhistorical approach that uses the central narrative of Augustine Heard & Co. to disentangle the ties that bound the US to China and the British empire in the nineteenth century. Through the Heard brothers’ story, the book engages with a range of historical scales to unpack the varied contexts that affected the ways Americans interacted with British colonial society, defined their goals, formed and reformed their identities. Similar, in many ways, to their British neighbours, but also prepossessed of their own national interests, the Heards’ story provides an unparalleled example of how Americans gained acceptance into and contributed to the making of global empires. Centred on Hong Kong, The China Firm describes the transimperial lives of these American traders and the complex ways extraimperial communities interacted with British colonialism in China, providing a vital contribution to nineteenth-century global histories of Asia and an alternative narrative of British empire.