James Matheson’s Nephew Was Firmly Opposed to the Opium Trade

It is a well-known fact that Hong Kong became British as a direct result of the opium trade. After all, the wars that led to the cession of Hong Kong Island in 1841, and the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860, were named the First and Second Opium Wars, respectively, for a reason.

As a matter of fact, just as the opium trade in the first half of the nineteenth century led to the cession of Hong Kong, that same opium trade in the second half of the nineteenth century is what turned Hong Kong into a major trading hub in southern China.

Moreover, even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the opium trade—although not illegal in Great Britain—was met with strong opposition. So much so that Donald Matheson, the nephew of James Matheson (one of the two founders of Jardine, Matheson & Co., which made its fortune smuggling opium into China), left his uncle’s firm in 1848 to become a fierce advocate against the opium trade.

Jardine, Matheson & Co. eventually abandoned the opium trade in the 1870s and grew to become a Fortune Global 500 company; that is, one of the 500 largest companies in the world.