The Canton system: one port, one season, one set of merchants
For most of a century all European tea buying in China ran through a single port and a licensed guild of Chinese merchants. Every structural pressure that followed — the silver drain, the opium trade, the wars — starts from that bottleneck.
1757 to 1842
A process, not a moment. This happened over a period rather than on a date, and the span is the honest answer.
Documented. Attested in the historical record, and sourced to it.
What happened
Qing regulation confined European sea trade to Guangzhou, conducted through a licensed guild, within a defined trading season, with foreign merchants restricted to a strip of factories outside the city walls. Tea was the principal purchase, and it had to be paid for in silver because European goods found little demand.
Why it matters
The structure created the problem that produced the Opium Wars. Britain bought enormous quantities of tea and had nothing China wanted to sell in exchange, so silver flowed east continuously — and the solution the Company arrived at was to sell Indian opium into China to reverse the flow. The tea trade is the demand side of that equation and is not incidental to it.
Who was involved
The Qing state
stateRestricted European maritime trade to a single port under regulated conditions
The Cohong
institutionThe licensed guild of Chinese merchants through whom all foreign trade passed
The English East India Company
companyThe dominant European buyer for most of the period
Connected events
- 1834 — The East India Company loses its China monopoly
- 1839 to 1842, with a second war 1856 to 1860 — The Opium Wars, seen from the tea trade
- 1848 to 1851 — Robert Fortune's expeditions into China
What this touches
Producing countries
Culture and history
Compiled from published sources by people who are not historians of this region or period. Where accounts conflict the disagreement is reported rather than settled.