Trade with China helped start the American War of Independence from Great Britain in  the late eighteenth century. American colonists enjoyed Chinese products like silk, porcelain, and tea, but the British prevented direct trade between its colonies and China. Instead, the British East India Company had a monopoly on these products and controlled the trade of products going to and from China. Americans resented paying extra charges and taxes for Chinese goods, however, and these trade restrictions created tension between American colonists and their British rulers. This helped ignite a revolution.

Extra taxes on Chinese tea were an especially controversial issue for the British colonies in America. Colonists obstructed British ships in the ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston in acts of protest. Not long after dusk on December 16, 1773, a group of men attempted to disguise themselves as Native Americans and boarded three ships docked in Boston Harbor. Whooping and shouting, they hauled dozens of tea chests up onto the deck, broke them open, and dumped tea overboard. The event became known as the “Boston Tea Party” and was an early moment in the American Revolution. Gaining independence from Great Britain meant Americans could buy tea and trade other goods directly from China without paying additional taxes.

After the American Revolution, merchant ships freely went back and forth between port cities in the United States and China. Chinese diplomats, merchants, sailors, students, and domestic servants came on these ships, but up until 1850, very few Chinese people settled permanently in the United States. This chapter begins not with the much longer history of international relations between the United States and China, but rather with the first wave of mass emigration from China to the US in the mid-nineteenth century.