James Matheson - China and Hong Kong

China and Hong Kong

After leaving university, Matheson spent two years in a London agency house before departing for Calcutta, India and a position in his uncle's trading firm, Mackintosh & Co.

In 1807, Matheson was entrusted by his uncle with a letter to be delivered to the captain of a soon-to-depart British vessel. He forgot to deliver the missive and the vessel sailed without it. Incensed at his nephew's negligence, the uncle suggested that young James might be better off back in England. He took his uncle at his word and went to engage a passage back home. However, a chance encounter with an old sea captain instead saw Matheson departing for Canton.

Matheson first met William Jardine in Canton in 1818. The two men later formed a partnership which also included Hollingworth Magniac and Daniel Beale. At first the new firm dealt only with trade between Canton, Bombay and Calcutta, at that time called the "country trade" but later extended their business to London.

In 1827 he provided a small hand press for the printing of the Canton Register, the first English language newspaper in China, which was edited by William Wightman Wood, an American from Philadelphia who would later work for rival trading house Russell & Co.

On 1 July 1832, Jardine, Matheson and Company, a partnership, between William Jardine, James Matheson as senior partners, and Hollingworth Magniac, Alexander Matheson, Jardine's nephew Andrew Johnstone, Matheson's nephew Hugh Matheson, John Abel Smith, and Henry Wright, as the first partners was formed in Canton, and took the Chinese name 'Ewo' (怡和 "Yee-Wo" Literally Happy Harmony. The name was taken from the earlier Ewo Hong founded by Howqua which had an honest and upright reputation.

In 1834, Parliament ended the monopoly of the British East India Company on trade between Britain and China. Jardine, Matheson and Company took this opportunity to fill the vacuum left by the East India Company. With its first voyage carrying tea, the Jardine clipper ship "Sarah" left for England. Jardine Matheson began its transformation from a major commercial agent of the East India Company into the largest British trading hong, or firm, in Asia from its base in Hong Kong.

Jardine wanted the opium trade to expand in China and despatched Matheson to England to lobby the Government to press the Qing government to further open up trade. Matheson's mission proved unsuccessful and he was rebuked by the then British Foreign Secretary The Duke of Wellington. In a report, he complained to Jardine over being insulted by an "arrogant and stupid man". Matheson returned to Asia in 1838 and the following year Jardine left for England to continue lobbying.

Jardine's lobbying efforts proved more effective than his partner's and he succeeded in persuading the new British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston to wage war on Qing China. The subsequent First Opium War led to the Treaty of Nanking which allowed Jardines to expand from Canton to Hong Kong and Mainland China.

After Jardine died a bachelor in 1843, his nephews David and Andrew Jardine assisted James Matheson in running the Hong as Tai-Pan. Matheson retired as Tai-Pan during the early 1840s and handed over to David Jardine, another nephew of Jardine.