19th century to WWII: The early days
The firm of Jardine, Matheson & Company emerged in 1832 from an evolving process of partnership changes in the trading business Cox & Reid, a partnership established in 1782 between John Cox and John Reid, the latter having been agent of the Austrian trading company, Trieste Company.[15]
University of Edinburgh Medical School graduate William Jardine (1784–1843) joined the firm, by then having morphed through Cox & Beale, Beale & Company and Beale & Magniac into Magniac & Company, and the original partners long gone, in 1825 at the invitation of principal Hollingworth Magniac. University of Edinburgh graduate James Matheson joined three years later as Magniac prepared to retire.[15][16] With the cession of Hong Kong under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the firm, by then named Jardine, Matheson & Company, set up its headquarters on the island and grew rapidly, smuggling illegal opium from British-controlled India into China. Jardine Matheson has been called the "most successful opium smuggling company in the world".[17]
Both Jardine and Matheson became members of Parliament in Britain, and Matheson also bought the entire Scottish island of Lewis, clearing over 500 families off the land and shipping them to Canada in order to build Lews Castle.[17] Continuing its longstanding trade in smuggled opium, tea, and cotton, the firm diversified into other areas including insurance, shipping, and railways.
By the mid-19th century, the company had become the largest of the hongs or foreign trading conglomerates with offices in all the important Chinese cities as well as Yokohama, Japan.[18] One of its branch agencies, Glover and Co., established in Nagasaki, was known in Japan as an arms dealer who contracted with then-rebel forces from Chōshū Domain who led the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
Jardine Matheson invested in the first commercial railroad in China, the Wusong-Shanghai railroad.[19] It was built in July 1876, bought by the Qing dynasty the next year, and demolished the next year.[19]
In the early decades of the 20th century, Jardines built cotton mills, a press packing plant, and a brewery in Shanghai while expanding into Africa, America, and Australia. When war came to China in 1937, the firm suffered heavily both in Hong Kong and in mainland China.
After the 1949 foundation of the People's Republic of China, trading conditions for foreign companies under the new Communist regime became increasingly difficult.[20]
