The China Firm: American Elites and the Making of British Colonial Society - Paperbackby Thomas Larkin (Author) What roles did Americans play in the expanding global empires of the nineteenth century? Thomas M. Larkin examines the Hong Kong based Augustine Heard & Company, the most prominent American trading firm in treaty port China, to explore the ways American elites at once made and were made by British colonial society. Following the Heard brothers throughout their firm's rise and decline, The China Firm reveals how nineteenth