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"I Have Made Four Voyages to Canton:" Benjamin Bowen Carter, Chinese Bibliophile

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Benjamin Bowen Carter, son of a Providence, Rhode Island, printer, was introduced to the study of languages at an early age, and by the time he was a student at Brown (Class of 1786), he was able to correspond with his classmates in Latin. Carter went on to a training in medicine and became a physician, practicing first in rural Connecticut.  Country life evidently did not suit him and he turned to a life at sea as ship's physician and supercargo. He made four voyages to China in the early 19th century, spending a few year's residence in Canton, where he established a claim to being the first American to learn Chinese. 

This page has paths:

  1. The China Trade Era Caroline Frank

Contents of this path:

  1. China Re-Imagined
  2. Venture Capital
  3. Risk and Reward
  4. Encountering China
  5. Clavis Sinica
  6. An Appeal to the Mandarins
  7. For Want of an Interpreter
  8. The Historical Situation of the Observer

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