ENGLISH REGATTAS, SCOTTISH REELS, ITALIAN OPERAS, AND CHOPSTICK DINNERS : THE COMMERCE OF SOCIABILITY IN CANTON AND MACAO英國賽舟會、蘇格蘭雙人舞曲、意大利歌劇和中式晚餐：廣州和澳門的社交商業
This article examines how, between the late eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth, North American travelers and merchants in Canton and Macao transformed commercial experience into local forms of sociability. In contrast to a historiography predominantly centered on Christian mi...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
January 2010
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40033/3562 |
| Summary: | This article examines how, between the late eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth, North American travelers and merchants in Canton and Macao transformed commercial experience into local forms of sociability. In contrast to a historiography predominantly centered on Christian missionaries and edifying narratives of explorers, the author argues that commercial engagement—rekindled after the opening of direct American trade with China in 1784—produced a cultural encounter marked by the circulation of goods, social practices, and languages of “conviviality.” Methodologically, the text draws on narrative sources from travelers and documentation regarding the functioning of the Canton system, highlighting the institutional restrictions imposed on foreigners (including spatial segregation in the “factories” and control over access to the city and Chinese families). From this basis, the article interprets episodes of cultural exchange—such as the organization of events and forms of entertainment identified with Anglophone and European traditions, and practices of shared consumption (for example, “dinners with chopsticks”)—as negotiated mechanisms for building proximity, trust, and personal relationships among merchants of different origins. It concludes that, although the regulated and hierarchical environment limited contact, the “commerce of sociability” operated as a parallel cultural economy that reconfigured expectations and identities within the Luso-Chinese space and the port of Canton. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |