Another Look at Jardine, Matheson & Co.

 Let us take another look into Jardine, Matheson & Co. Enjoy an infocast on this topic. Until next time ...

https://intelpub.podbean.com/e/another-look-at-jardine-matheson-co/

What Matters - Another Look at Jardine Matheson & Co. (google.com)

Janus: Jardine Matheson Archive (cam.ac.uk) 

The Janus archive of Jardine Matheson was taken down. Sorry.

https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/manuscripts-university-archives/significant-archival-collections/jardine-0

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/e29beedf-face-39d5-bb5a-70914344d8d7

Chapter 3: The Rise of the Great Trading Houses. Pages 57-61. The India-China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century by Hunt Janin.

Amazon.com: The India-China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century (9780786407156): Hunt Janin: Books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chartered 

https://archive.org/details/historyofstandar00amph 

Jardine Matheson & Co. and HSBC:

https://intelpub.podbean.com/e/jardine-matheson-and-hsbc/

Shout out to David Carroll: How do you explain this? (248) david carroll - YouTube

https://soundcloud.com/de-smooth/podcast-music 

Music by Miyatz Lao

When Corporations, Churches, Newspaper Media, and Governments Collaborate

 

While we are still perusing the history of Russell & Co., let us see yet another connection to powers of other entities. Jointly along with their British counterparts they actively participated in community affairs to include supporting missionary publications and local newspapers. Sibing He observes,

 

“In 1869, Russell & Co. subscribed forty copies of the newly launched Church News (教會新報), the predecessor of The Chinese Globe Magazine (萬國公報), which became the most influential missionary journal in China during the 1870s and 80s. The total number of subscriptions of that magazine in 1869 was over 700 copies.33 From 1863-1865, Nichol Latimer, one of the managers of Russell & Company’s Shanghai Steam Navigation Co., was also the publisher of The North China Herald (北華捷報), the most important English newspaper published in treaty port China.34 The company also supported the effort to reissue the Chinese Repository (中國叢報), a Protestant journal published in Canton and Macao from 1832-1851, which had greatly contributed to American-Chinese intellectual exchanges.” (He, 2011, p. 11)

 

We now see a connection with Russell & Co., the same Russell & Co. that was the largest American trading house in the nineteenth (19th) century in China, and traded silk, tea, and opium. An opium trading firm working with the Church mission’s media and newspaper publications is quite interesting. We will take another look at Russell & Co.’s connection to key positions in government. We find also that due to Russell & Co.’s “… predominant financial position in American business communities in China and its partners' wide connections in Washington,⁴⁰ Russell and Co. controlled the U.S. consulates in Shanghai and Canton, the most important treaty ports in China.⁴¹” (He, 2011, p. 13) We also learn that members of the company were consuls[1] in Canton for over twenty (20) years. Until 1854 the Russell & Co. era of sitting on the consulship ended when Paul S. Forbes of Russell & Co. was forced to resign as consul “… for public condemnation of his involvement in the opium trade …” Strange that this public condemnation did not come about earlier in history.

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[1] An official appointed by a government to live in a foreign city and protect and promote the government's citizens and interests there. (Online, 2020)

 

I have concluded over the years in the form of a question with an immediate obvious answer to it. What do people do when they have an advantage? They use it. To demonstrate proof of this from a Russell & Co. perspective,

 

“Russell's domination of consular services greatly benefited its business since it not only enabled the firm to directly utilize government source to facilitate its business operation but also provided access to confidential information of its commercial rivals.” (He, 2011, p. 14)

 

So, let us get this straight. We become a powerful trading house with the chief product traded being opium. We use our profits to buy-off government. We then become key figures within government. We then collaborate with Church and Newspaper media. But some still argue against capitalism though upon further review from a Russell & Co’s perspective it looks like something altogether different than what we have come to understand as free market capitalism.[1] More on this later …

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[1] “The free market is an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control. It is a summary description of all voluntary exchanges that take place in a given economic environment. Free markets are characterized by a spontaneous and decentralized order of arrangements through which individuals make economic decisions. Based on its political and legal rules, a country's free market economy may range between very large or entirely black market.” 

References

He, S. (2011). Russell and Company in Shanghai, 1843-1891: U.S. Trade and Diplomacy in Treaty Port China. Hong Kong University. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University. Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https://amstudy.hku.hk/news/treatyports2011/files/sibinghe.pdf

Janin, H. (1999). The India-China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers.

Online, O. (2020, December). consul, n.1. Retrieved February 23, 2021, from https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/consul

Staff, I. (2020, April 28). Free Market. (B. Barnier, Editor) Retrieved February 13, 2021, from Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freemarket.asp

When Corporations and Governments Mix

 

Some may believe that government and corporations are completely separate entities. That is not the case. There were and are still times when they have a symbiotic relationship. So symbiotic that they even become one and the same. While Russell & Company is focused upon let us pear into their history yet again. From a document presented from Sibing He to the “A Tale of Ten Cities: Sino-American Exchange in the Treaty Port Era, 1840-1950-An Interdisciplinary Colloquium,” Honk Kong University, 23-24 May 2011.

 

“The majority of the resident Americans were merchants. Russell & Co. played an active role in this mercantile community, representing U.S. interests in foreign settlements in Shanghai. From 1849-1869, seven members of the Russell firm were elected to the municipal councils of foreign settlements. No other firm, British or American, had more representatives serving in the municipal councils than Russell & Co. during this period.29 John N. Alsop Griswold, partner of Russell & Co. and U.S. vice-consul at Shanghai, was elected to the municipal council of the British Settlement in 1849. In 1852 he was succeeded by Edward Cunningham who was also a Russell partner and the succeeding U.S. vice-consul at Shanghai. When the Shanghai Municipal Council of the International Settlement was created on 17 July 1854, Cunningham became one of the seven board members and served on the Taxation and Finance Committee. In May 1868 he was elected chairman of the SMC board. By the end of the 1860s, seven merchants in Russell and Company had served as councilors of the municipal councils …” (He, 2011, p. 10)

 

Not one other British nor American firm had more representatives within the settlements of Shanghai. This gives us an idea of how powerful Russell & Company actually was. A company similar to Jardine Matheson & Co. that traded in opium which was illegal in China but due to Great Britain’s power and connections at that time was still widely traded. Why did it happen that the trade was still allowed? How about,

 

“Once off-loaded in the Canton area, opium was stored in receiving ships. With the active connivance of Chinese officials, it was then carried to ports along the coast by shallow-draft Western ships known as coasters and by Chinese smugglers in small boats variously known from the number of their oars as centipedes, scrambling dragons or fast crabs.” (Janin, 1999, p. 28)

 

One might ask how was this all made possible. It’s not hard at all to understand once you look into the British East India Company. During the time that Great Britain desired, instead, to trade than conquer in India, India was not a unified nation in the early seventeenth century. With that political fragmentation up until 1947 when they obtained their independence, Great Britain was able to capitalize on using that fragmentation to their benefit through the British East India Company which largely traded in opium. They were even called at that time the Honourable Company and John Company. Janin observes,

 

“For years it was also the de facto government of India and was explicitly responsible for carrying out the politics of the British Crown, such as growing opium for export to China.” (Janin, 1999, pp. 35-36)

 

This is quite interesting especially when you carry this understanding into our more recent and even current times. More on all of this later …

 

References

He, S. (2011). Russell and Company in Shanghai, 1843-1891: U.S. Trade and Diplomacy in Treaty Port China. Hong Kong University. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University. Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https://amstudy.hku.hk/news/treatyports2011/files/sibinghe.pdf

Janin, H. (1999). The India-China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers.

 

 

A look into Russell & Company

 

Samuel Wadsworth Russell

Russell & Company Building Built 1885

Let us pear into another powerful trading firm that dealt mostly in silks, tea, and opium during the time of Jardine Matheson & Company, that prospered from 1842 to 1891. An American company called Russell & Company founded by Samuel Wadsworth Russell that in 1830 took over Perkins & Company.

https://amstudy.hku.hk/news/treatyports2011/files/sibinghe.pdf 

Samuel Russell - Wikipedia

Collection: Russell & Co. records | HOLLIS for (harvard.edu)

                                                        

Hunt Janin in his The India-China Opium Trade of the Nineteenth Century stated:

"By the nineteenth century the export and shipping of opium was in the hands of private traders such as the British firm of Jardine, Matheson and Co. and the American firm of Russell and Co., which owned or chartered fast opium clippers to carry the drug from Bombay or Calcutta to China - first to Whampoa [Huangpu], a port 12 miles below Canton [Guangzhou], and then, after 1821 when the trade was halted there, to Lintin [Lingding] island and other anchorages in the Canton estuary."  (Janin, 1999, p. 24)

https://industrialhistoryhk.org/russell-company/ 

Enjoy a further reading on this. More on Russell & Company to follow.

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-z47at-fb4d4a

References

Janin, H. (1999). The India-China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers.

Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail

A reading of Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail

After looking into different subject matters in relation to history I found that when you focus upon the money and those that create it and control it you will come to learn what many never come to the understanding of. Who is in control? Who owns what matters? Why is it that some can do certain things and nothing or little happens to them while the greater number of us cannot operate that way? How long has this been going on? Why are some so apathetic to being attentive too and alerting others to begin focusing upon what may bring certain houses of cards either down or at least to the focal point? Let us explore an article that sheds light upon one of the most powerful entities in modern times, which was purchased by another powerful entity of a slightly earlier time.

https://intelpub.podbean.com/e/gangster-bankers/

How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-102004/ 

Buzzfeed News:

THE FINCEN FILES 

Thousands of secret suspicious activity reports offer a never-before-seen picture of corruption and complicity — and how the government lets it flourish. 

By Jason Leopold, Anthony Cormier, John Templon, Tom Warren, Jeremy Singer-Vine, Scott Pham, Richard Holmes, Azeen Ghorayshi, Michael Sallah, Tanya Kozyreva, and Emma Loop

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/fincen-files-financial-scandal-criminal-networks

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ): Global banks defy U.S.  crackdowns by serving oligarchs, criminals and terrorists 

The FinCEN Files show trillions in tainted dollars flow freely through major banks, swamping a broken enforcement system. 

By ICIJ 

September 20, 2020 

https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/global-banks-defy-u-s-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists/

Controlled Disintegration II

 

Let us re-visit the concept of ‘Controlled Disintegration.’

 

Let us properly define disintegration.

 

1. The process of losing cohesion or strength.

 

1.1 The process of coming to pieces.

 

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/disintegration

 

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/central-planning/#:~:text=Central%20planning%20is%20also%20referred,the%20work%20of%20Karl%20Marx 

So, we are looking at a centrally planned and controlled process of the current structure coming to pieces or losing cohesion and strength. The invisible managers and others saw some things coming. The idea of freedom is waning. Just as the idea of nation-states. A, or newer periods are being ushered in. Much re-structuring is taking place. We will see where all of this goes.

 

Nation states are being challenged today unlike times previous. There have been political, educational, familial, intersexual dynamic, and even social changes that have left the world looking altogether different. Many have and are covering the specific facets of our modern world. It takes time to narrow much of this down. But it can be done. Rana Dasgupta, in the Guardian article titled The demise of the nation states observes,

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/05/demise-of-the-nation-state-rana-dasgupta

“What is the relationship between these various upheavals? We tend to regard them as entirely separate – for, in political life, national solipsism is the rule. In each country, the tendency is to blame “our” history, “our” populists, “our” media, “our” institutions, “our” lousy politicians. And this is understandable, since the organs of modern political consciousness – public education and mass media – emerged in the 19th century from a globe-conquering ideology of unique national destinies. When we discuss “politics”, we refer to what goes on inside sovereign states; everything else is “foreign affairs” or “international relations” – even in this era of global financial and technological integration. We may buy the same products in every country of the world, we may all use Google and Facebook, but political life, curiously, is made of separate stuff and keeps the antique faith of borders.” (Dasgupta, 2018)

 

Central planning or economic planning by governments appear to be becoming more and more of a reality in our modern times. Jan Tinbergen in Central Planning observes,

 

“The historical origin of planning techniques applied today clearly springs from two main sources: Russian communist planning and Western macroplanning. Russian planning was designed to guide in detail the production processes of a whole country, taking advantage of a completely publicly owned productive apparatus. This program was based on a general background of Marxian ideas, which forecast that enterprises would become larger and larger and that finally the community would take them over and operate them as one big enterprise. 

… Western macroeconomic planning had a very different origin, namely the desire to understand the operation of the economy as a whole. It was highly influenced by the statistical concepts relevant to national or social accounts and by Keynesian concepts, combined with market analysis, which later developed into macroeconomic econometric models.” (Tinbergen, 1964, pp. 4-5)

 

I have mentioned previously that some of your best economists were also philosophy majors. Philosophy as defined,

 

1 The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.

 

1.3 A theory or attitude held by a person or organization that acts as a guiding principle for behavior.

 

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/philosophy

 

Philosophy gets into the behaviors of human beings. The current method and approach to economics is largely based upon econometric modeling. It largely does not consider how people work as in the decisions that they have and will make. This has been a major issue for some time. The current version of capitalism is not even based upon free markets meaning,

 

“The free market is an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control. It is a summary description of all voluntary exchanges that take place in a given economic environment. Free markets are characterized by a spontaneous and decentralized order of arrangements through which individuals make economic decisions. Based on its political and legal rules, a country's free market economy may range between very large or entirely black market.” (Staff, 2020)

 

This is termed by some as free market capitalism. We do not have free markets. It is capitalism but not as many of us have come to understand it. Which is why many are leaning towards a desire for socialism. Capitalism is rooted in competition. Let us take a look at what Sam Vaknin observed concerning competition,

 

“Competition has innumerable advantages: a. It encourages manufacturers and service providers to be more efficient, to better respond to the needs of their customers, to innovate, to initiate, to venture. In professional words: it optimizes the allocation of resources at the firm level and, as a result, throughout the national economy.

 

More simply: producers do not waste resources (capital), consumers and businesses pay less for the same goods and services and, as a result, consumption grows to the benefit of all involved. b. The other beneficial effect seems, at first sight, to be an adverse one: competition weeds out the failures, the incompetents, the inefficient, the fat and slow to respond. Competitors pressure one another to be more efficient, leaner and meaner.” (Vaknin, 2009)

 

No one likes to lose. So, some get to a certain place and then work to change the rules so that they will never lose what they have obtained. Some never get there’s and work to take what others have obtained. This idea of equality does not exist within the real world. We have never worked that way. Fairness, equality, etc. are great ideals but it is not possible when you consider family lineage, upbringing, opportunities, choices, and circumstances. There were and are always winners and losers. This is just the way that it works.

 

We are moving to a more controlled model of economics and life in general. This goes against how people work. The invisible desires to see a world the way that they desire. They are going to continue to work to bring it about. We will explore more of this in time.

https://intelpub.podbean.com/e/controlled-disintegration/

https://intelpub.podbean.com/e/controlled-disintegration-ii/

https://intelpub.podbean.com/e/controlled-disintegration-ii-voice/

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:17fedc62-8787-454e-ac74-296751174c09

References

Dasgupta, R. (2018, April 5). The demise of the nation state. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/05/demise-of-the-nation-state-rana-dasgupta

Staff, I. (2020, April 28). Free Market. (B. Barnier, Editor) Retrieved February 13, 2021, from Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freemarket.asp

Tinbergen, J. (1964). Central Planning. New Haven, CT, US: Yale University Press.

Vaknin, S. (2009). Financial Crime and Corruption (3rd ed.). REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA: Lidija Rangelovska A Narcissus Publications Imprint.

 

 

Controlled Disintegration - Ever Heard of the 1980's Project?

 A reading of documents related to the 1980's Project.

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:1df9034e-41d4-4d8c-9825-ad51af395095

https://intelpub.podbean.com/e/controlled-disintegration/ 

p. 55. Alternatives to Monetary Disorder. 1977. Fred Hirsch and Michael L. Doyle Edward L. Morse 

The Political Economy of the Dollar. The Fred Hirsch lecture sponsored by the Fred Hirsch Memorial Committee at Warwick University Coventry, England, on Thursday, November 9, 1978. Paul Volcker, President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

https://mellon.org/grants/grants-database/grants/council-on-foreign-relations-inc/47400017/ 




Global Policy Issues In ʼ80's to Be Topic For a Study Project By Peter Grose Dec. 26, 1976

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/12/26/archives/global-policy-issues-in-80s-to-be-topic-for-a-study-project.html 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00913367.1977.10672686?journalCode=ujoa20 

https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B004G606FI&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_KTBEVC6X78XBS27X3QHZ 

A Reading of Propaganda by Edward L. Bernays

 

"THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the

organized habits and opinions of the masses is an

important element in democratic society. Those who

manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute

an invisible government which . is the true ruling

power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our

tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men

we have never heard of. This is a logical result of

the way in which our democratic society is organized.

Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in

this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly

functioning society."

Page 9. Propaganda. Edward L. Bernays. November (1928).

https://intelpub.podbean.com/e/reading-of-propaganda-by-edward-l-bernays/

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275553

Enjoy a reading of Edward L. Bernays' book titled "Propaganda," originally printed November 1928.