To the British, South East Asia was mysterious and in many ways unintelligible. It was home of ancient and sophisticated civilisations which viewed the world in a wholly different way to inhabitants of the British Isles.

Trade with China goes back many centuries. We can think of the Silk Road and the trade in ceramics. For the British, it was the East India Company which in the early nineteenth century held the monopoly in trade. I write of the Company and the British in India in this link.

All this changed in 1833 when the East India Company’s Chinese monopoly was removed. This lay open the largest population on earth to the trading ambitions of British merchants. ‘Open’ was not quite the right word, for the Chinese aristocracy was conservative in the extreme and bound up closely with the teachings of Confucius, at least in theory. It was an ancient civilisation which regarded the rest of the world as barbarians. The view of the Emperor was that China had all it needed and so had no great appetite for trade.

The trade that did take place between China and Britain essentially comprised Chinese exports of silk and increasingly of tea, and imports of British woollen and cotton cloth. Tea had been grown in China for centuries and there was a great ritual surrounded its drinking. Tea arrived in Europe in around 1610 and in 1660 Pepys mentions it in his diaries placing it in Britain. From then on, firstly with the wealthy, tea drinking entered the British DNA. It would be some time before tea growing also took place in Ceylon, India or East Africa and so the British demand had to be met by China.

There was a seasonal rhythm to the trade. East Indiamen left the Thames loaded with British goods. They would catch the southwest monsoon winds in the China Sea and pass Portuguese Macao before unloading at Whampoa, the anchorage for Canton. The ships would then be loaded with tea and make their way home borne by the northeast monsoon winds.

As the British appetite for tea grew so did an adverse balance of payments, for China’s enthusiasm for wool and cotton was not great. Britain needed silver to balance the books and this was to hand in exchange for opium grown in India.

Opium was widely used for medicinal purposes, but no great quantities were demanded. It is possible that the use of tobacco set an example for the recreational use of opium. Either way demand for opium grew in China, as demand for tea grew in Britain.

The dangers of opium became apparent and it was banned in China. Yet, such were the profits to be made and the addiction caused, that opium grown by the British in India had to be smuggled into China with the authorities turning a blind eye. A significant trade grew.

William Jardine had left Scotland for the East in 1802 as a ships surgeon where he learnt about international trade. In 1817 he set up as an independent merchant. Later still James Matheson joined him in the famous partnership. So in 1832, Jardine, Matheson & Co established in Canton to facilitate trade in tea and other commodities. They naturally fell into the illicit opium trade.

Toward the end of the 1830s, the Chinese blind eye cleared and steps were taken to end of the opium trade. The British, not least companies like JM, faced both severe financial loss and the removal of promising future trade. That this came to war is perhaps a function of a strong modern empire clashing with a proud ancient civilisation. The first Opium War, between 1839 and 1841, was won by the British through more modern equipment and tactics. The Treaty of Nankin, which brought the conflict to a close, created five treaty towns, including Canton and Shanghai, where foreigners could live and trade. Also and of great significance Hong Kong island was ceded to the British. For British traders this meant that China was now open for business.

Jardine, Matheson were keen to offer support to the Chinese in their tentative efforts to at least in part join the modern world, but any suggestion of foreign management was rejected. Chinese capitalists were reluctant to invest in state led projects. Some forged relationships apart from government and did prosper with British heavy machinery facilitated by JM. An example was of textile machinery supplied by Platts of Manchester. For state sponsored projects, railways were seen as key and JM supplied railway locomotives from Ransome and Rapier of Ipswich. However, the Chinese were reluctant to allow foreigners to build their railways. Finance was needed and in stepped another great colonial name, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank which together with JM arranged substantial foreign loans.

Jardine, Matheson & Co proved to be the ideal agents. They could finance trade, they could source products, they owned ships to carry both imports and exports. They arranged insurance and storage, including cold storage. In the early days, shipping was ruled by the prevailing winds. In time the company bought fast, nimble clippers able to run the China sea and monsoons.

China was developing and key to this was coal mining. This had taken place in China for centuries, but the limitations of equipment meant that mines could be sixty feet deep at most. Machinery and expertise was required and JM found British engineers and machinery suppliers. Coal needed to be moved to port and so railways were needed. Again British expertise was used but there began local manufacture of locomotives to British design. Alongside railways China looked to shipping and the move away from clippers to steam. Here through JM she looked to the Clyde and to Aberdeen.

The Second Opium War (1856-1860) came about because the British and other nations including America and France wanted a greater opening of the Chinese market for their goods. Britain also wanted opium to be legalised to facilitate that trade. The war comprised repeated attacks by the British including venturing inland. The war was exacerbated for the Chinese ruling dynasty by the rebellion of Christian Chinese. The eventual peace treaty was weighted heavily in favour of the attacking nations and this built up hostility in the decades to come. The treaty ceded Kawloon to the British securing Hong Kong island as a major British colony. In time the opium trade reduced, but it had caused untold damage to ordinary Chinese.

China and JM were not alone.

In July 1859, William Keswick of JM arrived at Yokohama in Japan some six years after that country began slowly to open her doors to foreign trade. For Britain the desired import was Japanese silk, in payment at first there were all manner of manufactured luxuries. The Japanese however had other ideas in mind and began importing heavy machinery in order to build their own manufacturers to supply Japanese consumers. With the shortage of raw cotton caused by the American civil war, Japan also supplied raw cotton to Manchester. JM were only too happy to facilitate this even though increasingly Japanese exports were carried on ships built and owned in Japan.

The growth of the British Empire demanded better communication and postal services began to be introduced.

The Peninsula and Orient Steam Navigation Company founded in 1835 began by sailing from Falmouth and London to the Iberian peninsula down to Gibraltar which had become a British territory in 1704. They were awarded their first Royal Mail contract in 1837 and by 1842 the first steamer had sailed; two years later a regular mail service had been established from England to Alexandria and from Suez to Ceylon, Madras and Calcutta. By 1845, Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai were also being served. Over the years P&O bought competitors, notably in 1914 the British India Steam Navigation Company whose chairman was James MacKay, later Lord Inchcape, with merchant interests in East Africa.

Samuel Cunard, from Halifax Nova Scotia, entered the frame in 1838 when together with others he founded the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Co which was awarded the lucrative Royal Mail contract between Liverpool and Halifax, beating Brunel’s SS Great Britain in the first steam powered Atlantic crossing. The Liverpool route soon put pay to any ambitions which Bristol may have had. In 1878 the company became the Cunard Steamship Company. In time they extended their routes to the east.

With the growing popularity of tea, plants were taken from China to see if they would grow successfully in India and Ceylon. In India planting began in Assam but then spread to Darjeeling in the 1850s. The first small quantity of Indian Assam tea was auctioned in London in 1838. By 1878, India had 113 gardens covering nearly 19,000 acres and producing 3.9 million pounds of tea annually. by 1885, India was exporting 35,000 tons. In terms of British traders, Harrison and Crossfield figured largely.

The island of Ceylon was an important military base but wasn’t paying for itself. It was this that inspired the promotion of tea planting. This was done at risk by Scots and English entrepreneurs. The risks were financial but also of health. In spite of this, tea planting thrived. The infrastructure to support trade within Ceylon came from the military particularly the Ceylon Pioneer (or labour) Corps in support of Royal Engineers and civil engineers experienced in railways.

In 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles of the British India Company established a British colony at Singapore. It wasn’t long before British companies were using it as a trading post for their South East Asian business. Of greatest note Scotsman, Alexander Guthrie, established his trading company there in 1820.

Singapore opened the Malay peninsula to the British and there followed the planting of both rubber, and palms for oil for lubrication and soap production. Guthrie became a significant owner of rubber plantations as did Harrison and Crossfield. With the coming of motor vehicles, the demand for rubber was strong and many adventurous young men were attracted to the East. I write of my father’s experience of planting rubber in the first decade of the twentieth century in Dunkirk to D Day. In addition to production above the ground, there were reserves of tin to be exploited. The infrastructure to support tin mining came from the military particularly the Ceylond Pioneer Corps in support of civil engineers experienced in railways.

Further reading:

The Thistle and the Jade, A Celebration of 150 years of Jardine, Matheson & Co, Maggie Keswick (ed.) (London: Octopus, 1982)