Opium and Empire

The "History" page of the current Jardines website devotes just a single line to the trading practices of company founders William Jardine and James Matheson, noting merely that they were responsible for sending the first private shipments of tea to England in 1834. Now a "diversified business group" with revenues of over US$ 50 billion, the brevity with which Jardine and Matheson's lives and careers are dealt with by the company they established is perhaps unsurprising; to acknowledge the central role their founders played in the Chinese opium trade and the first Opium War is understandably undesirable for a company still inextricably linked with trade in China.