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In 1832 William Jardine and James Matheson established what would become the greatest British trading company in East Asia in the nineteenth century. After the termination of the East India Company’s monopoly in the tea trade, Jardine, Matheson & Company’s aggressive marketing strategies concentrated on the export of teas and the import of opium, sold offshore to Chinese smugglers.
Jardine and Matheson, recognized as giants on the scene at Macao, Canton, and Hong Kong, have often been depicted as one-dimensional villains whose opium commerce was ruthless and whose imperial drive was insatiable. In Opium and Empire, Richard Grace explores the depths of each man, their complicated and sometimes inconsistent internal workings, and their achievements and failures.
From George Walden’s review, “Gentlemen Drug Dealers“, in Wall Street Journal:
On a trip to China in November 2010, just ahead of Armistice Day, a team of British politicians led by Prime Minister David Cameron appeared on the Great Wall sporting traditional commemorative red poppies, before Chinese officials requested their removal. China has never forgotten the Opium Wars and won’t allow the world to forget them either.
Histories of the events leading to Britain’s seizure of Hong Kong in 1841 and the forcible opening of the Middle Kingdom to Western commerce are two a penny, but Richard J. Grace’s Opium and Empire does something different. Instead of focusing on the politics or battles, it traces the origins of the company at the heart of the opium trade, Jardine, Matheson & Co. Today it is a conglomerate incorporated in Bermuda, dealing in everything from cars and dairy farms to hotels. In the early 19th century it was the foremost British trader in the region—and the biggest purveyor of the drug.
The personalities of the two founders were a key to their success. Both were tough-minded Scots, champions of free trade against the quasi-monopoly of the government-backed East India Co. A dour workaholic who kept a single chair in his office to discourage idle chat, William Jardine began as a ship’s doctor on the London-Canton run before turning to commerce. James Matheson, a younger and more socially connected figure, was later to become his business partner for life. They traded in tea and silks, yet for decades most of their profits came from the illicit—and, as many in Britain argued, immoral—sale of opium on the vast Chinese black market.
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