1. O’Donnell to President of Congress, 20 June 1786, LS, DNA: PCC, item 78, 17: 385. Congress forwarded the letter to JJ on 11 July. See OFA Journal description begins Daily Journals, Office of Foreign Affairs, 1784–1790, 2 vols., Papers of the Continental Congress, RG 360, item 127, National Archives (M247). Accessed Fold3.com. description ends , 12 July 1786 (EJ: 3765). According to the OFA Journal description begins Daily Journals, Office of Foreign Affairs, 1784–1790, 2 vols., Papers of the Continental Congress, RG 360, item 127, National Archives (M247). Accessed Fold3.com. description ends for 5 Aug. (EJ: 3766), JJ returned this letter to the President of Congress with his report, which was read in Congress on 7 Aug. O’Donnell’s letter was returned to the Office of Foreign Affairs on 12 Nov. 1787 (JCC, description begins Worthington C. Ford et al., eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (34 vols.; Washington, D.C., 1904–37) description ends 31: 502). A copy of it is filed with JJ’s report in DNA: PCC, item 124, 2: 210–19.

O’Donnell (1749–1805) was an Irish-born employee of the British East India Company who had established himself as a country trader in several parts of Asia. Thomas Randall, supercargo with Samuel Shaw of the Empress of China, engaged him to captain the Pallas, an English ship Shaw purchased to ship East India goods on his and Randall’s private accounts to the United States. O’Donnell may have been the “Gent in China” who had a 1/5 interest in her cargo. Pallas, “from China and Pondicherry,” reached Baltimore on 9 Aug. 1785. The Maryland Journal expressed pride that Baltimore could attract China traders and that the Pallas’s crew of Chinese, Malays, Japanese, Moors and a few Europeans, were all “employed together as Brethren.” The crew, however, claimed to have been “compelled by force of arms” to sail the ship from Batavia to Baltimore and to have been severely treated on the voyage.

2. O’Donnell advocated direct trade between the United States and Asia to supply American demand and to create markets for American products that could be exchanged for Asian goods carried in American-built vessels manned by American seamen. He recommended prohibiting the importation of Asian goods on foreign vessels, vending surplus Asian goods to the West Indies and Spanish America, allowing rebates for Asian imports reexported to other markets, and negotiating treaties with Asian sovereigns who might otherwise confuse Americans with the British. He wanted Congress to commission him to negotiate these treaties and to supervise American trade in the region. He told Congress that many who had made fortunes in India wanted the opportunity to come to America under the protection of the American flag. He asked to be furnished with blank passports and authorized to issue them to ships coming to the United States direct from Asia loaded with the property of people intending to become American citizens. Such ships, he recommended, should enjoy the same privileges, immunities and exemptions from extra duties, tonnage, etc., as American vessels returning from Asia. JA confirmed that there was a prevailing practice by British merchants “to procure some American merchant to metamorphise a British into an American bottom, to trade to the East Indies.” See JA to JJ, 27 Jan. 1787 (ALS, DNA: PCC, item 84, 6: 407).

On the profits earned by employees of the British East India Company, see Santhi Hejeebu, “Contract Enforcement in the English East India Company,” Journal of Economic History 65 (2005): 496–523. On the problems they encountered in remitting their earnings to Britain, see Harlow, Second British Empire, description begins Vincent T. Harlow, Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763–93 (2 vols.; London and New York, 1952–64) description ends 2: 501–2, 508–9, 511; E. H. Pritchard, “Private Trade between England and China in the Eighteenth Century (1680–1833),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 1 (August 1957): 108–37; and Furber, “American Trade with India,” description begins Holden Furber, “The Beginnings of American Trade with India,” New England Quarterly 11 (1938): 235–65 description ends 241–42. On the multinational cooperation with their attempts to evade East India Company regulations, see Shaw to JJ, 31 Dec. 1786, below. For an alternative proposal, see JA to JJ, 11 Nov. 1785, above.

JJ was later advised that American vice-consul Randall had violated the stricture against giving protection to foreign vessels pretending to be American. He noted in the 20 May 1790 entry of his Circuit Court Diary, AD, NNC (EJ: 7351), that he had received in a packet of letters forwarded to him from Jacob Sarly in China, dated 22 Dec. 1789, “stating that 2 french Vessels use am Flagg—& that Ths Randall of Ship Jay, & vice Consul of U.S. for money protects one of them.” Sarly, commander of the ship America, was a member of the New York firm of Sarly and Barnwall (PAH, description begins Harold C. Syrett et al., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (27 vols.; New York, 1961–87) description ends 10: 389). Sarly’s letter, which JJ forwarded to TJ, is printed in PTJ, description begins Julian T. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (41 vols. to date; Princeton, N.J., 1950–) description ends 16: 39. The matter remained a concern. In his Circular to Consuls and Vice Consuls of 26 Aug. 1790, TJ instructed them to “use your endeavors that no vessel enter as an American in the ports of your district, which shall not be truly such, and that none be sold under that name, which are not really of the United States.” PTJ, description begins Julian T. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (41 vols. to date; Princeton, N.J., 1950–) description ends 17: 423.

3. O’Donnell became an American citizen. He acquired the Chesapeake, a new ship built in Maryland, for which he applied and obtained a sea letter (JCC, description begins Worthington C. Ford et al., eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (34 vols.; Washington, D.C., 1904–37) description ends 31: 596), claiming that its crew was “principally navigated by citizens of the United States” when it was mostly British and also included some of the men who had come on the Pallas. He sailed to India in the closing months of 1786, reached Calcutta in the fall of 1787, and returned to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, with a valuable cargo on 20 May 1789. The American Mercury of 19 May 1789 reported that Governor General Charles Cornwallis had ordered O’Donnell and the Chesapeake to be received “on the same footing with the other nations.” See Smith, Empress, description begins Philip Chadwick Foster Smith, The Empress of China (Philadelphia, 1984) description ends 185, 226; the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, 12 Aug., 1785; the Pennsylvania Evening Herald and the American Monitor, 9 Nov. 1785; the Columbian Herald or the Patriotic Courier of North-America, 14 Nov. 1785; the Charleston Evening Gazette, 16 Jan. 1786; Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, description begins Tyler Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia: A Critical Study of the Policy of the United States with reference to China, Japan and Korea in the 19th Century (New York, 1941) description ends 8, 26; Furber, “American Trade with India,” description begins Holden Furber, “The Beginnings of American Trade with India,” New England Quarterly 11 (1938): 235–65 description ends 235–65; Brunhouse, “Lascars in Pennsylvania,” description begins R. L. Brunhouse, “Lascars in Pennsylvania: A Side-Light on the China Trade,” Pennsylvania History 7 (1940): 20–30 description ends 20–30; the “Letters of Phineas Bond, British Consul at Philadelphia, to the Foreign Office of Great Britain, 1787, 1788, 1789,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1896, 1: 598.

4. Shaw had been appointed American consul in Canton. See JJ to Shaw, 30 Jan. 1786, above. The U.S. Congress named Benjamin Joy of Newburyport consul to Calcutta and other ports in Asia in 1792. Lacking instructions to receive him as such, the governor of Calcutta received him as commercial agent. It was not until 1843 that an American consulate opened in Calcutta. See LDC, description begins Paul H. Smith et al., eds., Letters of Delegates to the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (26 vols.; Washington, D.C., 1976–98) description ends 23: 80–81, 131–32; and Seward W. Livermore, “Early Commercial and Consular Relations with the East Indies,” Pacific Historical Review 15 (1946): 31–58.

5. JJ certainly realized that to behave otherwise would be to endanger American prospects for trade in India. British officials had given a hospitable welcome to the first Americans trading there and assessed duties on their trade at rates similar to or equal to those assessed on British merchants. This policy was largely confirmed in Article XIII of the Jay Treaty of 1794, which enjoined American vessels from carrying India goods to ports outside the United States and from engaging in the coastal trade of British territories in East India. It also, however, put American trade with India on a more privileged footing than any other nation and allowed American ships to stop at St. Helena for refreshment. American vessels admitted to Indian ports paid the same tonnage duty as British vessels paid in American ports, and the same duties on importation and exportation of cargoes as British vessels did. While JJ would have liked to see the article explicitly recognize an American right to carry India goods to other Asian ports, the best he was able to obtain was a statement that “Vessels going with their original Cargoes, or part thereof, from one port of discharge to another” would not be “considered as carrying on the Coasting Trade.” See Shaw to JJ, 21 Dec. 1787, below; JJ to GW, 3 Sept. 1795, AL (FC), NNC (EJ: 12866); Smith, Empress, description begins Philip Chadwick Foster Smith, The Empress of China (Philadelphia, 1984) description ends 185, 201, 226, 228, 230, 235; Pritchard, “Control of the China Trade,” description begins E. H. Pritchard, “The Struggle for Control of the China Trade during the Eighteenth-Century,” Pacific Historical Review 3 (1934): 280–95 description ends 284; and Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, description begins Tyler Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia: A Critical Study of the Policy of the United States with reference to China, Japan and Korea in the 19th Century (New York, 1941) description ends 28.