Who would have thought that the tea trade that occurred between China and North America was pivotal to creating the first millionaires in the United States?
There was such a time when the U.S. had considerable relations with China, especially on the barter and trading concept the economies practiced at that time. After the Boston Tea Party incident historical incident, the amount of scrutiny tea got was very high and people started drinking coffee.
But it did not mean that the tea trade was long gone. The first boat the American set sale to the land of China, landing in Canton was the "The Empress of China," which set sail from New York.
The boat carried 242 casks of New England and Appalachian ginseng, which was highly demanded in China. This opened the trade between China and the United States.
The relationship between Chinese traders and the American traders were far warmer than that of the British Traders in China.
"This contrasted with the relationship between the Chinese and the English merchants, which was often very tempestuous, distrustful and hostile." Eric Jay Dolin, author of When America First Met China, tells The Salt.
A Chinese millionaire, Houqua, said to have a net worth of $30 million at that time, was very close to one John Murray Forbes, an American trader, who not only invested in the America's growing railroad business but of his Chinese friend as well.
Even Franklin Roosevelt's ancestors had close relations with the Chinese millionaire. The tea that The Empress returned sold for a 25 percent profit in the U.S. and many merchants jumped in to the trading business.
The creations of ships were fast growing and many merchants in the business of "tea trading" fostered the very first American millionaires. Millionaires such as John Jacob Astor, Thomas Handasyd Perkins, and Stephen Girard were among the few.
But the trading business had also an imbalance; China was importing more, while the American was exporting less. It became so, to balance the business, narcotics like opium was exported to China.
The Chinese highly demanded Opium and so tea trading was also the reason for the narcotics trade to transpire.
