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Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson
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. He details their decades-long journeys between Britain and China, their business strategies and standards of conduct, and their inventiveness as "gentlemanly capitalists." The commodities they marketed also included cotton, rice, textile goods, and silks and they functioned as agents for clients in India, Britain, Singapore, and Australia. During the First Opium War Jardine was in London giving advice to Lord Palmerston, while Matheson was detained under house arrest at Canton in the spring of 1839, an incident which helped prompt the armed British response. Moving beyond the caricatures of earlier accounts, Opium and Empire tells the story of two Scotsmen whose lives reveal a great deal about the type of tough-minded men who expanded the global markets of Victorian Britain and played major roles in changing the course of modern history in East Asia.
- GenresHistoryEuropean History
472 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 19, 2017
The title is a bit misleading; the subtitle should have been the title as that was the book's primary topic. The subject of opium and empire is better handled elsewhere although covered sufficiently in terms of how Jardine and Matheson convinced themselves that trading opium was just like trading any other vegetable substance. For good coverage of this period in Chinese history, turn to Julia Lovell's The Opium War or for the Chinese view, Hsin-pao Chang's classic, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War. I should own up and say that I have read many volumes on this period and even spent a few hours many years ago in Urumqi (where Lin was banished by the emperor for his 'failure' until rehabilitated) in search of the statue erected there in his honour. I found it at the top of a small summit in a local park overlooking a busy highway. Today he is honoured as one of China's first 'sons' to stand up against foreign oppression.
In my opinion, the book's best chapters are front and back--the chapters that cover Jardine's and Matheson's early (and later) years. Jardine's frugality in his career were, it seems, the result of a childhood that was not as easy as Matheson's. The surprise was the fact that Jardine had trained as a surgeon, and spent his first few trips to and from China serving as a ship's surgeon for the East India Company while in his early 20's. It was on these trips that he learned about trade and the potential profits that could be made from commercial ventures. He was 12 years older than Matheson but the two were truly equal partners once they established their trading house. Once they retired and returned to Scotland, Jardine died in middle age of bowel cancer; Matheson lived on to old age, marrying and collecting land and estates as others collect stamps.
If you're looking for anecdotes concerning these two men, this is a good place to look. Grace has included quotes from diaries and letters, and many small facts that I hadn't seen elsewhere--for example the origin of Jardine's nickname given him by the Chinese--'Iron-headed rat'. Every China scholar knows the nickname, but I suspect most have assumed as I did that it was due to Jardine's stubbornness. It was rather earned from an incident when he was struck in the head by a girder and didn't stop despite the injury, but continued on his errand. Living in Singapore, I was also amused by the tale of how when things got hot in Canton, some British merchants considered sending their stocks of opium to Singapore (for safe-keeping). That made me wonder what Raffles would have thought of that!
In my opinion, the book's best chapters are front and back--the chapters that cover Jardine's and Matheson's early (and later) years. Jardine's frugality in his career were, it seems, the result of a childhood that was not as easy as Matheson's. The surprise was the fact that Jardine had trained as a surgeon, and spent his first few trips to and from China serving as a ship's surgeon for the East India Company while in his early 20's. It was on these trips that he learned about trade and the potential profits that could be made from commercial ventures. He was 12 years older than Matheson but the two were truly equal partners once they established their trading house. Once they retired and returned to Scotland, Jardine died in middle age of bowel cancer; Matheson lived on to old age, marrying and collecting land and estates as others collect stamps.
If you're looking for anecdotes concerning these two men, this is a good place to look. Grace has included quotes from diaries and letters, and many small facts that I hadn't seen elsewhere--for example the origin of Jardine's nickname given him by the Chinese--'Iron-headed rat'. Every China scholar knows the nickname, but I suspect most have assumed as I did that it was due to Jardine's stubbornness. It was rather earned from an incident when he was struck in the head by a girder and didn't stop despite the injury, but continued on his errand. Living in Singapore, I was also amused by the tale of how when things got hot in Canton, some British merchants considered sending their stocks of opium to Singapore (for safe-keeping). That made me wonder what Raffles would have thought of that!
January 29, 2024
Imagine some people in a neighboring country, like Mexico for instance, decide that a certain drug, maybe crystal meth or fentanyl, has a potentially giant market in another country like the U.S.A. So they decide to start businesses that manufacture and traffic these drugs. Of course these narcotics are dangerous, wrecking people’s health and causing addiction as well as draining people of their money and landing them in prison; therefore the American government classifies these drugs as illegal, criminalizes their sales and distribution, and labels the businessmen as purveyors of organized crime, drug syndicates, and cartels. But from the Mexican traffickers’ point of view, they aren’t doing anything wrong. They provide work for poor people and make money in a country that isn’t rich. Furthermore, the drug sales provide a steady income whereas other business ventures tend to be less predictable and unstable. Farmers who want to grow produce, like avocados for example, grow some banned substances to keep their finances steady while the market for vegetables fluctuates. This benefits trucking companies too who smuggle drugs in boxes of cucumbers and cilantro across the border, providing work for truck drivers who need to pay rent and feed their families. Of course, a lot of Americans, especially the government and police, think this whole situation is rotten so they fight back hard. Now imagine the Mexican cartels decide to start a war with America to force them into legalizing their drugs so the gangsters south of the border can make even more money than they already do. Eventually they convince the US government to give them the entire city of San Diego so they can have a convenient base for the distribution of their goods. All praise be to Santa Muerte.
This is roughly what happened when the Jardine-Matheson trading company began selling opium on the black market in China at about the same time the Napoleonic Wars began. Richard J. Grace, in his Opium and Empire, tells the story of this nefarious corporation and concludes that they weren’t such bad people and were, in fact, just ordinary businessmen who just happened to do trade in a vice that ruined people’s lives.
You could just as well argue that good things Mexican drug cartels do outweigh the bad. It isn’t fair that dangerous narcotics are illegal in El Norteno and they are really just ordinary gentlemen who provide a service that is in demand anyways. They work hard to earn their money and there’s nothing a red-blooded American capitalist loves more than people who get rich by working hard. Hell, you might even say that the cartels are nothing more than heroes of free market capitalism, letting the invisible hand of the marketplace decide what people buy and sell. Right?
Right?
The story of William Jardine and James Matheson begins in Scotland more innocently than one might expect. Jardine came from a poor farming family and got employed as a surgeon for the East India Company, Great Britain’s colonial trading and shipping monopoly. The younger Matheson came from an upper class family in Edinburgh and eventually went on to work for the East India Company too. He met up with Jardine in India, the two paired up, and went to work as speculators, trading in silk, rice, tea, and, most importantly, opium which they purchased in India and shipped to China.
The kingdom of China at that time was closed to foreigners. They would not allow outsiders to enter their lands for business so they sectioned off a strip of the river bank running along the outskirts of Canton, or what is now known as Guangdong. There they were allowed to build a tiny village of warehouses, factories, and living quarters. Chinese merchants came to the riverfront to do business, buying and selling all commodities except opium which was illegal in China. But Jardine-Matheson insisted on peddling opium since the addiction it caused guaranteed a steady flow of wealth which helped to supplement their more volatile trading goods whose prices fluctuated unpredictably. The Jardine-Matheson company therefore sold opium offshore in international waters to smugglers who brought it onto the mainland. If Jardine-Matheson couldn’t sell opium the legal way, they had no qualms about breaking Chinese laws to make their fortune.
A large portion of this book describes the backgrounds of these two businessmen and the running on their company. It also details how they grew to such prominence as the East India Comany monopoly ended, making room for other companies to enter the competitive colonial markets. Most of this is ordinary business history explaining the methods and functions of Jardine-Matheson. If that is within the scope of your interest, it might be exciting, but actually the writing is often dry and boring. The several passages about finance and banking are especially dull. There is nothing more boring then people talking about money, especially when it gets a bit technical. It is even worse than watching golf on TV.
The story gets more exciting in the run-up to the Opium Wars. After the Chinese government seized and destroyed the entire inventory of opium, Jardine and Matheson pressured the British government to invade China in retaliation and to demand compensation for the lost products. The second Opium War happened when the British colonial government decided to force China to legalize opium for the benefit of British businesses and the extension of British colonial power. Talk about a sense of entitlement. And yes, large numbers of people died over this. Along the way, China gave the mostly uninhabited island of Kowloon, Hong Kong to the British for the sake of allowing them to have a base for business-dealings in the region. So selling illegal drugs on the black market in China was the primary source of finance for building up the British Empire. Maybe in the future, Latin American drug cartels will rule the world.
The end of the book has a long chapter about the lives of Jardine and Matheson after retirement. It isn’t especially interesting. Then, in the epilogue, the author evaluates the Jardine-Matheson company from a moral and historical standpoint. He acknowledges that selling illegal drugs on the black market and starting two wars with China was kind of a crappy thing to do, but he lets them off with a slap on the hand, figuratively speaking, because they were really just a couple of ordinary businessmen who did a lot of good things for their communities back in the British Isles. More importantly, they belonged to some prominent social clubs back home and were considered respectable men by other members of the upper class. Richard Grace goes so far as to say that they were historically important, as if that could even be denied, and their amorality was of little consequence because they were pioneers of free market capitalism. Well, that is actually a weak argument for those of us who are not especially enthusiastic about capitalism to begin with.
And about those Mexican cartels...well they may be harming and endangering a lot of lives, but they are putting people to work and financially enriching their local communities, so it isn’t all that bad, is it? Besides those guys are fun to hang out with wow do they ever throw some fantastic parties and that’s really what’s important. Who cares about all those clucks who buy their drugs on the streets. It’s their own fault they’re losers because they didn’t choose to get a job and work like the rest of us. Right? Yeah right.
I don’t know anything about the author Richard J. Grace, but I can say for sure that we don’t see eye to eye when it comes to values. Opium and Empire tells the story of the Jardine-Matheson company, saying what it needs to say to accomplish that. It is a boring book, however, written by an author with questionable morals. He claims that Jardine and Matheson were not merelya couple of sleazy drug dealers. But just because they hid behind a facade of respectability and a Protestant work ethic, doesn’t mean they weren’t a couple of slimeballs at heart. I don’t think Grace is necessarily immoral, but I get the impression his ethics are in the wrong order. This book does serve a historical purpose, but there has to be an account of this company that is more engaging and a little more balanced. The Chinese perspective on this history is barely even mentioned.
If you visit Hong Kong now, you will find a skyscraper in the center of Kowloon with a unique architectural feature. It is a slender rectangle with its cladding entirely permeated with round windows like portholes. This is the Jardine House, world headquarters of the Jardine-Matheson company which still exists to this day. Because of its unique appearance, the local citizens of Hong Kong have nicknamed it the House of 1000 Assholes. Sometimes I wonder if the people of Hong Kong think back over the times when Chinese peasants became emaciated from lounging in opium dens while their families starved to death because all their income went to feeding their addictions. Maybe that name doesn’t actually indicate how they feel about the Jardine House’s appearance but actually signifies how they feel about all the company’s employees that got rich and powerful by enslaving Chinese people to narcotics. Richard Matheson justified the opium trade by saying he had never seen a Chinaman “beastialized” by opium use. I’m not sure what he meant by “beastialized”, but one thing is certain: while he was running his smuggling business and throwing dinner parties in his mansion, he wasn’t spending time in the opium dens of China, observing how his drug was ruining people’s lives. Just an ordinary businessman? No I don’t think so, but then again take a look at the businessmen of the 21st century. I’m not sure they any better.
This is roughly what happened when the Jardine-Matheson trading company began selling opium on the black market in China at about the same time the Napoleonic Wars began. Richard J. Grace, in his Opium and Empire, tells the story of this nefarious corporation and concludes that they weren’t such bad people and were, in fact, just ordinary businessmen who just happened to do trade in a vice that ruined people’s lives.
You could just as well argue that good things Mexican drug cartels do outweigh the bad. It isn’t fair that dangerous narcotics are illegal in El Norteno and they are really just ordinary gentlemen who provide a service that is in demand anyways. They work hard to earn their money and there’s nothing a red-blooded American capitalist loves more than people who get rich by working hard. Hell, you might even say that the cartels are nothing more than heroes of free market capitalism, letting the invisible hand of the marketplace decide what people buy and sell. Right?
Right?
The story of William Jardine and James Matheson begins in Scotland more innocently than one might expect. Jardine came from a poor farming family and got employed as a surgeon for the East India Company, Great Britain’s colonial trading and shipping monopoly. The younger Matheson came from an upper class family in Edinburgh and eventually went on to work for the East India Company too. He met up with Jardine in India, the two paired up, and went to work as speculators, trading in silk, rice, tea, and, most importantly, opium which they purchased in India and shipped to China.
The kingdom of China at that time was closed to foreigners. They would not allow outsiders to enter their lands for business so they sectioned off a strip of the river bank running along the outskirts of Canton, or what is now known as Guangdong. There they were allowed to build a tiny village of warehouses, factories, and living quarters. Chinese merchants came to the riverfront to do business, buying and selling all commodities except opium which was illegal in China. But Jardine-Matheson insisted on peddling opium since the addiction it caused guaranteed a steady flow of wealth which helped to supplement their more volatile trading goods whose prices fluctuated unpredictably. The Jardine-Matheson company therefore sold opium offshore in international waters to smugglers who brought it onto the mainland. If Jardine-Matheson couldn’t sell opium the legal way, they had no qualms about breaking Chinese laws to make their fortune.
A large portion of this book describes the backgrounds of these two businessmen and the running on their company. It also details how they grew to such prominence as the East India Comany monopoly ended, making room for other companies to enter the competitive colonial markets. Most of this is ordinary business history explaining the methods and functions of Jardine-Matheson. If that is within the scope of your interest, it might be exciting, but actually the writing is often dry and boring. The several passages about finance and banking are especially dull. There is nothing more boring then people talking about money, especially when it gets a bit technical. It is even worse than watching golf on TV.
The story gets more exciting in the run-up to the Opium Wars. After the Chinese government seized and destroyed the entire inventory of opium, Jardine and Matheson pressured the British government to invade China in retaliation and to demand compensation for the lost products. The second Opium War happened when the British colonial government decided to force China to legalize opium for the benefit of British businesses and the extension of British colonial power. Talk about a sense of entitlement. And yes, large numbers of people died over this. Along the way, China gave the mostly uninhabited island of Kowloon, Hong Kong to the British for the sake of allowing them to have a base for business-dealings in the region. So selling illegal drugs on the black market in China was the primary source of finance for building up the British Empire. Maybe in the future, Latin American drug cartels will rule the world.
The end of the book has a long chapter about the lives of Jardine and Matheson after retirement. It isn’t especially interesting. Then, in the epilogue, the author evaluates the Jardine-Matheson company from a moral and historical standpoint. He acknowledges that selling illegal drugs on the black market and starting two wars with China was kind of a crappy thing to do, but he lets them off with a slap on the hand, figuratively speaking, because they were really just a couple of ordinary businessmen who did a lot of good things for their communities back in the British Isles. More importantly, they belonged to some prominent social clubs back home and were considered respectable men by other members of the upper class. Richard Grace goes so far as to say that they were historically important, as if that could even be denied, and their amorality was of little consequence because they were pioneers of free market capitalism. Well, that is actually a weak argument for those of us who are not especially enthusiastic about capitalism to begin with.
And about those Mexican cartels...well they may be harming and endangering a lot of lives, but they are putting people to work and financially enriching their local communities, so it isn’t all that bad, is it? Besides those guys are fun to hang out with wow do they ever throw some fantastic parties and that’s really what’s important. Who cares about all those clucks who buy their drugs on the streets. It’s their own fault they’re losers because they didn’t choose to get a job and work like the rest of us. Right? Yeah right.
I don’t know anything about the author Richard J. Grace, but I can say for sure that we don’t see eye to eye when it comes to values. Opium and Empire tells the story of the Jardine-Matheson company, saying what it needs to say to accomplish that. It is a boring book, however, written by an author with questionable morals. He claims that Jardine and Matheson were not merelya couple of sleazy drug dealers. But just because they hid behind a facade of respectability and a Protestant work ethic, doesn’t mean they weren’t a couple of slimeballs at heart. I don’t think Grace is necessarily immoral, but I get the impression his ethics are in the wrong order. This book does serve a historical purpose, but there has to be an account of this company that is more engaging and a little more balanced. The Chinese perspective on this history is barely even mentioned.
If you visit Hong Kong now, you will find a skyscraper in the center of Kowloon with a unique architectural feature. It is a slender rectangle with its cladding entirely permeated with round windows like portholes. This is the Jardine House, world headquarters of the Jardine-Matheson company which still exists to this day. Because of its unique appearance, the local citizens of Hong Kong have nicknamed it the House of 1000 Assholes. Sometimes I wonder if the people of Hong Kong think back over the times when Chinese peasants became emaciated from lounging in opium dens while their families starved to death because all their income went to feeding their addictions. Maybe that name doesn’t actually indicate how they feel about the Jardine House’s appearance but actually signifies how they feel about all the company’s employees that got rich and powerful by enslaving Chinese people to narcotics. Richard Matheson justified the opium trade by saying he had never seen a Chinaman “beastialized” by opium use. I’m not sure what he meant by “beastialized”, but one thing is certain: while he was running his smuggling business and throwing dinner parties in his mansion, he wasn’t spending time in the opium dens of China, observing how his drug was ruining people’s lives. Just an ordinary businessman? No I don’t think so, but then again take a look at the businessmen of the 21st century. I’m not sure they any better.
April 19, 2022
This double-biography of Jardine and Matheson traces their mercantile careers which took them to Canton, to founding Jardine-Matheson and to their exploits of trading with the Chinese, most notably in Opium.
This work provides an interesting lens through which to view the events which led up to the Opium War of 1839-1842, but is a little disappointing in terms of the analysis of the drivers and motivation and role of the two protagonists in advocating a military solution to the problems that the foreign trading community were facing in Canton in the 1830s. In this respect the work would have been stronger if the author had had access to the subsequently published research by Song-Chuan Chen ('Merchants of War and Peace', HKU, 2017) which goes into significantly greater detail on the subject.
The book is particularly strong at discussing the challenges that Matheson faced in his life post-China as the second-greatest landowner is Scotland at a time of famine, recession and unemployment.
This work provides an interesting lens through which to view the events which led up to the Opium War of 1839-1842, but is a little disappointing in terms of the analysis of the drivers and motivation and role of the two protagonists in advocating a military solution to the problems that the foreign trading community were facing in Canton in the 1830s. In this respect the work would have been stronger if the author had had access to the subsequently published research by Song-Chuan Chen ('Merchants of War and Peace', HKU, 2017) which goes into significantly greater detail on the subject.
The book is particularly strong at discussing the challenges that Matheson faced in his life post-China as the second-greatest landowner is Scotland at a time of famine, recession and unemployment.
July 24, 2018
Another new history in the sense that we are starting to see more and more about the history of China as it enmgaged with the West withoput the usual mythology. Well researched biography of two British merchants who spearheaded trade between China India and Britain.
March 15, 2017
Interesting times and history, but the book is a bit flat.
June 30, 2020
Couldn't get through it. Gave up.
April 16, 2022
A bit slow in the beginning, but these characters in history are quite compelling so I was sad to reach the end.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews