Weekly meeting

John Bonington’s after dinner talk could be entitled, ‘Unseen Wealth’, and described the origins and continued low-key existence of Jardine Mathieson and Company, a trading conglomerate based in Hong Kong. John first became aware of the company when he lived in the Dumfries area some years ago. At that time the head of the Jardine Mathieson and Company, Sir William Keswick, had a large estate in the area within which he maintained an outdoor sculpture park covering several acres. This included many large and important art works, notably by Henry Moore, set into the landscape to display them to best effect. It was open to the public who were free to wander the park and admire the artistry.

The sculpture park was created by the Keswick family who owed their great wealth, and the origins of Jardine Mathieson and Company, to the opium trade in the nineteenth century. As John Bonington prefaced his talk with the quote, there is “nothing so fearful as a Scotsman on the make”. Until the 1830s the British East India Company had a monopoly on trade with China, operating virtually as a parallel state with its own armed forces and separate administration. However they were outmanoeuvred by another Dumfries-born Scotsman, one William Jardine, who managed to install himself as the Danish (!) consulate in Canton. Using this position he started shipping Chinese tea to Britain in 1834 in partnership with one James Mathieson. To pay the Chinese for the tea, Messrs Jardine and Mathieson hit on the idea of supplying the Chinese, who had previously demanded payment in silver, with opium from India. This lucrative circle of trade flourished and in 1839, when the Chinese state objected to the import of opium, Jardine and Mathieson managed to persuade the British government to go to war to force the trade in the so-called Opium Wars. Modern day Columbian drug cartels have much to learn!

Jardine Mathieson and Company thrived, acquiring Hong Kong as a trading base, and diversifying into other less controversial activities ranging from banking to hotels and railways. An earlier William Keswick (the grandfather) joined the company in 1855 and became its chief executive. Although many assets were lost with the Chinese revolution in 1949 it is still a formidable company, largely operating behind the scenes through well-known names like Cathy-Pacific Airlines and Mandarin Hotels. Trading today as Jardine Mathieson Holdings it had a turnover of $39.5B in 2017, whilst the wealth of the Keswick family was estimated at $6.354B in 2018.