Portrait photo of Compradore - Public domain portrait print

Photograph shows a Chinese "compradore", full-length portrait, seated, facing right, with pipe.
Title from front and back of item.
Caption on back : "Compradore. The Chinese compradore may be looked upon as the embodiment of the term "squeeze" as he is employed as a go between, or middleman by all Mercantile houses, and in the purchase of produce squeezes the seller exhorbitantly, and the buyer also he is also head domestic in private houses engages all the servants and squeezes them makes all household purchases and squeezes on every article will not permit any tradesman to come near his master's house except his own peculiar friends who pay him a squeeze. Compradores are employed in Banks and squeeze by constantly circulating bad coin or refusing to take good without a squeeze, and are as a rule wealthy, often able to buy and sell their employers, and are yet obsequious A class in fact which is an open, acknowledged and necessary evil but is looked upon in the proper light, is neither more nor less than paid dishonesty personified."
Photograph taken by John Thomson in Shanghai, 1870-72. (Source: Regine Thiriez, 2009)
In album: Japanese and Chinese portraits, [p. 50, upper right].