Americans and Macao

The theme of this volume is the American relationship with Macao and its region through trade, politics, and culture, and the focus is mainly on the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The essays address topics such as the role of the China trade in US pacific expansion and exploration, US consuls, smuggling networks, American women’s perceptions of China, and missionary and educational work. In all of the encounters, Macao emerges as a central player, adding a new dimension to our understanding of Sino-American relations.

Paul A. Van Dyke is professor of history at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. He has spent many years researching various aspects of life, trade, and societies in the Pearl River Delta and Maritime Asia.

“Significantly, gambling and casinos merit almost no notice in Americans and Macao. Instead, this intriguing collection of essays illuminates sometimes brilliantly the complex intersections among Americans, Macao, and the structures and processes of globalization that converged in the waters off the South China coast in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.” —Paul A. Cohen, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University

“A lively and important volume both for its focus on Macao and for its treatment of the pre-treaty port period as a matter of Sino-American relations rather than as just the Old China Trade.” —James Fichter, author of So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism