5.33

****Standard 5.34>** = = =Explain the importance of the China trade and the whaling industry to 19th century New England, and give examples of imports from China .=

Topics on the Page

 * Whaling in New England**
 * The Economic Significance of Whaling**
 * **Multicultural Resources and Primary Sources**
 * **Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage Round the World**
 * The China Trade**



Whaling In New England
Whale oil was a major industry in New England during the 19th Century.
 * The whale's oil, obtained from the blubber and used for lighting and lubricating, and other byproducts became important resources for trade.
 * Europeans had whaled in the Atlantic for many centuries prior, but the practice didn't expand in the colonies until the late 1700's.
 * New Bedford, Massachusetts would eventually become known as the "whaling capital of the world."
 * As many as 700 ships called New Bedford's port their home at the middle of the 18th century. However, the industry that provided so much to the regions economy met its demise with the expansion of underground oil extraction.
 * The ships would shoot harpoons at the whales with wooden floats attached by ropes
 * The whales would become exhausted pulling the floats through the water
 * They would be killed with lances and then towed to shore
 * The blubber from the whale would be removed and boiled into oil
 * The blubber was boiled in iron vats called "try-pots"
 * The rest of the whale would be made into various products
 * When whales started to disappear from the coasts, whalers moved their search into the deeper water
 * The whaling ships held 30-35 men
 * The whaling industry began its decline in the 1860s

Link here for more information on the whaling industry

Estimated 900 vessels engaged in whaling worldwide in the late 1840s Over 700 of them were considered American vessels Americas economic viable years was 1845 at which 525,000 barrels of whale were produced. Whaling was Massachusetts third largest industry from 1840 to 1850 and its fourth largest in 1850 according to US census Direct employment on whaling vessels during this period is estimated to be between 20 and 35 men working on each vessel
 * Economic Significance of American Whaling**

Pacific Encounters: Yankee Whalers, Manjiro and the Opening of Japan from the New Bedford Whaling Museum uses the life of John Manjiro, the first Japanese person to live and work in the continental United States to explore the connections between east and west.

Link here to listen to an audio book version of Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville.

Link here for a youtube playlist of popular whaling songs of the 19th century, recorded by Paul Clayton in the 1950s

[[image:Rotating_globe-small.gif]]Multicultural Resources

 * Portraits of Ports, a website from the New Bedford Whaling Museum presents a look at whaling ports in New Bedford, Massachusetts and Barrow, Alaska, home to the western Arctic's first whalers, the Inupiat Eskimo peoples.
 * The site focuses on the people, the community, and the impacts of the whaling industry ecologically and economically


 * Cape Verdeans in the Whaling Industry. The area outside the town of Nantucket (Massachusetts) where Cape Verdeans lived was known as "Guinea-Town" or "New Guinea."


 * Life Aboard a Whaling Ship by the New Bedford Whaling Museum. This describes daily life, traditions, and multicultural environments on the whaling ships.
 * New England Whaling for kids. Watch an interactive video on the whaling industry in New England during the 17th Century. Here: []

In the 19th century New Bedford, Massachusetts became the center of the New England whaling industry as well as a main point of Portuguese immigration. The city became known as the "Portuguese capital of the United States."

Click here to read letters of whalers, from the Nantucket Historical Society

Click here for a timeline of American Whaling from PBS Click here to read about the wives of whalers


 * [[image:Screen Shot 2018-01-06 at 11.48.22 AM.png link="@http://www.eagletribune.com/news/longest-painting-in-north-america-measuring-a-quarter-mile-is/article_414b44b4-d124-11e7-bb30-27a1ccd52a99.html"]]Longest Painting in North America--Measuring a Quarter-Mile—Is Restored at a Massachusetts Museum (November 24, 2017)**
 * **Artists: Benjamin Russell & Caleb P. Purrington (1848)**


 * [[image:Multimedia.png link="@https://vimeo.com/36824966"]]Purrington and Russell's Whaling Voyage Round the World**

The China Trade
There was high demand for Chinese products after the revolution in the United States. Having observed the British reap profits from the trade with China, the colonies were eager to secure these profits for themselves. Some of the reasons for the need to trade with China were; the need for manufactured goods provide employment for American citizens the need to generate profits for capital development on the colonies Tea became the dominant imported commodity Americans obtained from China through the end of the 19th Century. Trade expansion in tea jumped from 36% in 1822 to 65% in 1860.
 * China was traditionally isolated and the only trading post available was Canton
 * After the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, more trading posts opened
 * [[image:http://brucemuseum.org/images/exhibits/13two.jpg width="274" height="173" align="right"]]During the 1800s, trade with the Chinese rose as it subsequently declined in Europe
 * Ships would start from the Eastern coast of the US, around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean, and ended in China
 * Upon their return from the Oriental Region, ships provided:
 * paintings
 * tea
 * wallpaper
 * furniture
 * lacquer ware silver
 * ivory
 * jade[[image:jade.jpg width="283" height="324" align="right" caption="Chinese Jade"]]
 * textiles
 * porcelain
 * navigational instruments and charts
 * Owning Chinese goods represented being in a higher class and being cultured
 * A lot of the furniture styles that made there way over can still be found in the New England region and beyond today.



Click here for more info on American trade with China

Click here to read "China's Gifts to the West" by Professor Derk Bodde


 * === Link to USI.28 for more on the changing economy in mid-19th Century America ===
 * ===**Link to K-12 Modern China wiki for material on Chinese history in the 20th Century**===