The "Woman Pigeon": Gendered Bonds and Barriers in the Anglo-American Commercial Community in Canton and Macao, 1800-1849.

Prior to the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, Chinese officials prohibited the presence of foreign women in China. While, many Chinese regulations concerning foreign merchants and missionaries were not enforced, this rule xuas. In 1830 and again in the 1840s, in the aftermath of the first Opium War, clusters of British and American families traveled up the Pearl River to the factories that housed visiting merchants in Canton (Guangzhou). On both occasions, trouble ensued. But the conflicts may not have been all they seemed. This article suggests that fordgn women did have the potential to be a problem in China, less because of inherent cultural differences than because both Chinese officials and Western merchants used Western women to embody a boundary betiueen peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]