By the middle of the eighteenth century, Canton (Guangzhou) had become the most important port connecting China and the West. Large quantities of goods moved in and out of the city: Chinese tea, silk, porcelain, American silver, and increasingly large amounts of opium, guns, and gunpowder. Ideas also moved back and forth, including Christianity which would influence the founder of Taiping Revolt in the 1800s. A scene of smuggling, corruption, and increasingly tense politics between the Qing Empire and Westerners, Canton emerged as one of the most important places globally in the fractious age of Western imperialism. This illustration depicting Western embassies and Chinese vessels on the Pearl River belies the tumult unfolding in the town and across the Qing Empire.