Among traditional European nations who often traded under national monopolies like the British and Dutch East India Companies, Americans were a citizenry who answered unto themselves. Americans founded their government on the principles of individual choice, and they carried on their business under a flag that proclaimed no allegiance to monopolistic trading houses or institutions. In a highly structured trade based on Eastern values, the Americans were often an unorthodox blend of a Western culture and Enlightenment ideals. Their presence could at various times bring the British and Chinese together, while yet on the issue of opium smuggling Americans could drive them apart. The idea was contrary to the way the world’s two largest empires, Great Britain and China, practiced trade at the time. The Americans had originally fought their revolution against Great Britain due to a lack of freedoms, one of which being in negotiating independent trade deals with countries like China. The Boston Tea Party was one of many protests against the British East India Company having the final say, and ultimate taxation, in how Americans received tea and other commodities from China’s port of Canton. The arrival of the American traders in Canton is a moment where the rising American empire met with the established powers of the ancient world in a trade dominated by these Chinese and British interests. It illustrates the tensions between the old monarchies and their philosophies and allows analysis of the tensions of the Old and the New World in a stage outside of colonial revolutions. It can help answer questions about residual tensions between the East and the West and the legacy of colonialism, inside an arena not unknown to us today: international relations and world trade.