Canton System
The dissolution of the Mongol empire in the fourteenth century made Central Asian trade routes dangerous and forced Western European powers to explore ocean routes. Following the Portuguese and Spanish Empire, Protestant powers such as the Dutch Empire and the British Empire began trading with China in the early 17th century. The Kingdom of Great Britain granted a monopoly of trade with China to the British East India Company in 1600, and Qing court moved to control this burgeoning trade with the West by creating the Canton System in 1756, granting a monopoly of trade to the merchants of the Thirteen Factories and restricted it to Canton (as Guangzhou was then known) in the south. The British Macartney Embassy of 1793 failed to convince the Qianlong Emperor to open northern Chinese ports for foreign trade or establish direct relations. The growing British importation of goods such as tea was offset by the illicit British sale of opium to smugglers. However, the Qing unilateral banning of the sale of opium led to the Opium Wars and Chinese defeat. The 1842 Treaty of Nanking replaced the Canton system with a series of treaty ports, ending the tributary system as well.