Beyond a cup of tea: Trade relationships between colonial Australia and China, 1860-1880

Abstract

This thesis examines the trade relationships between China and colonial Australia between 1860 and 1880. At the time, the Australian continent was emerging from the boom created by the 1850s gold rushes in the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales. China had submitted to the debts incurred from the two Opium Wars and, through that, the creation of the Treaty Ports. New companies and export industries were being developed. Trade between Australia and China increased. The key products included coal from New South Wales, sandalwood from Western Australia and tea from China. Together, they created a flourishing trade environment.

Attention in the China-Australia trade discourse has been overly restricted to the tea trade and the search for staples to pay for the tea. This thesis moves beyond this past bilateral consideration. Instead, it argues that a fuller understanding of the China–Australia trade relationship needs to be multifaceted and multi-national. Much bilateral trade was conducted via intermediary ports and traders, rather than directly between ports and traders in Australia and China. Further, complex payment and remittance systems involved firms based in an array of countries, including Great Britain, India and the United States. This thesis, thus, states the importance of analysing trade relationships within a multilateral focus.

This thesis uses analysis at the transaction level to explain the prevalent multilateral relationships of this period. Archival records from England, the United States and Hong Kong supplement those in Australia to provide insights into the methods employed to complete transactions. This thesis provides history with an interpretation of the records relating to the China-Australia trade. It engages the correspondence and financial records of of key companies like Jardine Matheson & Co. of England, Augustine Heard & Co. and Russell & Co. of the United States and Robert Towns and Co. from Australia, among others, to interpret the transactions.

Analysing trade at a transactional level requires an interdisciplinary approach that draws on insights from a mixture of historical sub-disciplines, including economic history, business history, maritime history, Australian history, China Treaty Port history, Chinese mercantile history and the histories of various commodities. All of these feature in this thesis under the umbrella of trade history to create a broader comprehension of port-to-port relationships. Interpreting at the transaction level moves this interdisciplinary study into an alternate realm, one that opens a better understanding of how each of its elements placed Australia within the global trade environment of the 1860s and 1870s. Show more