About the Author

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John R. Haddad is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Popuar Culture at Penn State Harrisburg. He was awarded the Gutenberg-e Prize in 2002 for his dissertation, which was published as The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture, 1776-1876. In 2010, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach and research at the University of Hong Kong.

Praise For…

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"John Haddad has written a subtle and spirited book, which takes America's first experiences in China as a means to explore the early years of the United States as an independent nation. This is a book about the magic of money and the ingenious ways that American business grandees reacted to the ever-shifting promises and disappointments of an emerging Asian market. It is also a book about religion, diplomacy, financial systems, arms manufacture, families under stress, ship-building, and opium. It is an absorbing tale, with many contemporary echoes." —Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern China

 "America's First Adventure in China is a well written, succinct, and elegant book. Haddad brings a fresh approach to—and makes a convincing case for his characterization of—the American presence in China. He describes how the Americans were isolated individuals acting pretty much on their own and with nothing in the way of state, military, or other institutional support. Their experience—operating in a fog of ignorance about a world to which they had only the most limited access—is significant, and he explains why the American experience diverged from rather than followed on the British model."

—Peter Buck, Senior Lecturer (retired) on the History of Science, Harvard University