The East India Company's Supercargoes soon found that, so long as they indirectly and humbly acknowledged the supremacy which the Manchu Dynasty now claimed over the whole world, expressly including also all foreign barbarians, the Chinese officials were perfectly ready to accept costly presents and to encourage foreign trade provided that it would quietly submit to their irregular exactions. Thereupon the Company began (A.D. 1681) sending ships direct from England to Macao, and later on (A.D. 1685) they succeeded in re-opening their agency at Amoy and (A.D. 1702) planting a factory also on the island of Chusan.
Up to this time, trade had been conducted in a loose and irregular manner. On the arrival of a ship in the waters of Canton, she was boarded by an officer of the Hoppo (Imperial Superintendent of Native Maritime Customs), who was at once offered a present (called cumshaw) upon the value of which depended the mode of measuring the ship, whereupon followed (in the absence of a fixed tariff) a disgraceful bargaining and haggling over the rates of port charges, linguist's fees and customs duties to be levied. When all these negotiations, hurried on frequently by a threat on the part of the Supercargo to take the ship away or temporarily suspended by sundry practical menaces on the part of the Hoppo's officers, had been concluded, the ship was allowed to proceed to Whampoa (the port of Canton) and there admitted to open trade with any officially recognized native merchant or broker.
A serious change was introduced with the year 1702. The East India Company having sent out (A.D. 1699) a Chief-Supercargo (Mr. Catchpoole) who was commissioned to act as King's Minister or Consul for the whole empire of China and the adjacent islands, the Chinese officials responded with a counter move. While the Chief-Supercargo's royal commission was studiously ignored and the term tai-pan (chief-manager) applied to the King's Minister, a Chinese merchant, entitled 'the Emperor's Merchant' but among the Company's Supercargoes thenceforth known as 'the Monster in Trade,' was now
