Interesting, closer look at specifically US trade with China from its outset. Useful observations, clear (if sometimes over-simplified for the general reader) depictions of the journeys, ships, procedures, and some of the more notable players in the trade, as well as some nice illustrations.

Originally published in 1941 in The Essex Institute Historical Collections (Salem, Mass.), the articles were written by a woman who lived in China as a girl with her parents (her father, Jacob Schurman, was Minister to China 1921-25) and later with her husband, a Marine Corps officer stationed in Shanghai and Beijing, according to the publisher's note.

Hawes is on occasion judgmental, both about the Chinese and the Americans, and some of her claims regarding the importance of new ideas to the American milieu are somewhat florid, but such flights are to be expected in an older book and do not detract too much from the text's readable style and the information contained within. ( )