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Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Calcutta (Kolkata)

The Red Rover has not yet returned from Calcutta. Our friends on that side of India appear to have taken leave of their senses, and are keeping our opium back, while we are obliged to buy for the coast.

William Jardine to John Rees, August 19th, 1837*

Calcutta occupied a critical place in the Jardine-Matheson global network, as the site of auction for opium grown on British East India Company plantations in the Patna and Benares regions, inland from the port of Calcutta.

As the quote above illustrates, a delicate financial calculus was required to achieve the highest profits. In this quote, William Jardine is complaining that his agent in Calcutta has been too slow in purchasing and sending Bengal opium to Lintin, and as a consequence the firm is now purchasing Bengal opium from its competitors in Lintin to take up the coast to Rees and the other opium captains. On other occasions, Jardine was known to complain that his agents in Calcutta were sending too much opium, over-saturating the market and driving prices down.

*Source: MS.JM:C4–6, Priv. Letters from Jardine, 1837-38, p. 81.

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Exploring the Jardine-Matheson Network 36 Landing page for exploring the Jardine-Matheson Network plain 2021-03-09T13:05:31-05:00 Peter D. Thilly
There are multiple ways to explore the materials I've assembled for this path. First-time visitors and anyone wishing to get the "whole story" should consider clicking through in order, but non-linear exploration is encouraged. To that end, on this page I've grouped the entire contents of the path to serve as a menu and map of the contents. The first six pages of the path center around the people and practices, and the remaining pages are built around locations of importance within the Jardine-Matheson global network.
People and Practices
- The Rees Brothers: Big and Little Li
- The Receiving Ship System
- Brokers and Middlemen
- Experts and Specialists
- Lascars and Manilamen
- Corruption and Bribery
Global Connections
- Chimmo (Shenhu Bay)
- Lintin
- Canton (Guangzhou)
- Macao
- Singapore
- Calcutta
- Patna
- Benares (Varanasi)
- Bombay (Mumbai)
- Malwa
- London
Discrete Physical Spaces 26 A list of some of the discrete physical spaces important to the spatial history of profit plain 2021-01-28T10:12:39-05:00 Peter D. Thilly
People pursued opium profits within discrete physical spaces. These spaces shaped decision making, instilling confidence or exposing vulnerabilities, embodying opportunities to enhance profitability, decrease risk, or manipulate the competition. Below is a list of some of the spaces that I have identified as important to the spatial history of profit. Visitors to the module are encouraged to compile their own lists, and to connect the significance of some of these physical spaces to those occurring in other modules.
Boats:
- The receiving ships at Lintin and in Shenhu Bay and along the coast. These were stationary vessels captained by British employees of Jardine-Matheson and their competitors, and crewed by sailors from all over the world. These ships rarely moved locations, and operated as floating warehouses. One of the fullest pictures of life on these receiving ships can be found in a travelogue by the American dentist, B.L. Bell (this account is from over a decade after the events of this module take place).
- Smaller, fast ships like the Fairy that made rapid and repeated voyages between the receiving ships anchored on the coast in places like Shenhu Bay and the company's central receiving ship at Lintin.
- Opium clippers like the Red Rover that voyaged between India (Calcutta or Bombay), Singapore, and the receiving ships at Lintin. Perhaps the most exciting examination of life aboard these opium clippers can be found in the Ibis Trilogy by author Amitav Ghosh.
Villages, Towns, and Cities:
- Yakou Village, a small coastal town dominated by the Shi lineage. This is where Shi Hou and his kinsmen operated a massive smuggling ring, positioning themselves as middlemen between Chinese buyers and British opium importers.
- Macao, a Portuguese colonial outpost in the Pearl River Delta near Lintin. One important function of Macao as a physical space was as a meeting place and job market for Chinese brokers to link up with British ship captains like the Rees Brothers to arrange trips up the coast.
- The Canton Factories, just outside of the Guangzhou city gates. This is where the leadership of the Jardine-Matheson company kept their offices, arranging deals with prominent Chinese merchants, interacting with the representatives of the Qing state, and overseeing the correspondence of the company's global network.
- Other cities like Calcutta, Singapore, Bombay, and London.
Anchorages:
- Neither fully on shore, nor fully out at sea, anchorages like Shenhu Bay and Lintin were also important physical spaces in this story. As the video I took from the beach at Yakou demonstrates, the anchorages were in plain sight of the shore. In the 1830s, a veritable fleet of fishing and trading sailboats would have passed back and forth past them each day.
Conclusion: Space as Process
The history of the opium trade in coastal Fujian shows how discrete physical spaces unfold into “space as process.” Discrete physical spaces and locales constitute, transform, break down, and reconstitute distinct spatialities through the movements, actions, and decisions of people.
The Jardine-Matheson Company’s global network was a collection of ports and sailboats between Great Britain, India, and China. The geospatial location of the ports can be mapped with numerical precision, lending these ports the aura of transcendental place. The assumption of the absolute-ness of location shapes how we see the visual media that represent these sailboats: not as wayfaring vessels seeking out moving locales in the shifting media of the ocean (wind, waves, etc.) (Peters 2015) but as objects in transit between two fixed points in the network. But the points were not so fixed as we might assume. The meaning, function, and distance between—and therefore, the location of—the Jardine-Matheson company's network of ports and sailboats between India and China changed appreciably over the course of the early nineteenth century. Clipper ships like the Red Rover fundamentally changed the nature of the spatialities of profit and information management for Jardine-Matheson. The actions of people like William Jardine, James Matheson, and their partners and employees transformed the possibilities of the technology into new patterns of trade, investment, and profit. The island of Lintin did not move locations, and neither did the ground upon which people built the cities of Singapore and Calcutta. But the work that these ports did to generate profits for Jardine-Matheson, and the distance between them, changed, bringing Lintin, Singapore, and Calcutta closer to each other and closer to London. These efforts worked in parallel with the efforts of the British Empire to produce new geopolitical frameworks for profit. The Treaty of Nanjing (1843), which concluded the Opium War, further changed the place of ports in the Jardine-Matheson network. Lintin lost its significance, replaced (in part) with the new British colony of Hong Kong. Meanwhile, the opening of two treaty ports in Fujian (Xiamen and Fuzhou) meant that people living in the coastal hinterland in places like Shenhu Bay had to create ways of trading, investing, and profiting from opium.
Space as process reveals the dynamic nature of narratives of place and personhood. The evolving commercial network between people like Shi Hou and John Rees precipitated the emergence of shadow or echo spatialities within the politics and worldviews of Qing administrators and patriotic Han Chinese onlookers from outside of the region. Coastal Fujian had long possessed the reputation of a place with outsized (and dangerous) lineages, along with illegal (and dangerous) commercial and migratory connections to various parts of Southeast Asia. But beginning in the 1830s, the connotations of coastal Fujian's connections and interactions with the outside world began to change. The actions of these people and the networks they operated came to represent the core essence of treason as China entered the modern era. Coastal Fujianese opium traders like Shi Hou came to personify treason during the rise of modern Chinese nationalism. The sources of the documents in this module underscore this. I found Shi Hou in a Chinese archive devoted to Qing history—an example of many legal cases the Qing administration brought against coastal residents who participated in the opium trade. In contrast, John and Thomas Rees and the Jardine-Matheson Company live on in modern glory—a dedicated archive at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, named buildings that continue to mark the coastline of the People’s Republic of China and Wales, and dozens of monographs devoted to understanding and analyzing their empire.
Manipulating Space and Time
Time was an essential component of how actors calculated their actions in the pursuit of opium profits. Below I explore two avenues through which to understand the role of time in a spatial history of the opium trade, but visitors are encouraged to develop their own arguments about time and to use the materials in this module to link up with the others.
Monsoon seasons and Asian commerce in the age of sail
In the age of sail, the movement of people, objects, and boats between China, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent was almost entirely dependent on the yearly pattern of monsoon winds. A single boat could only make the journey from India to China and back (or the reverse) but one time per year. This is because travelers going from India to China could only set sail during the southwest summer monsoon, and the trip would take two to three months. Likewise, the journey from China to India had to take place during the northeast winter monsoon, and again this trip would take nearly three months. The monsoon seasons therefore structured and limited trade between China, Southeast Asia, and India for most of recorded history.
Then, in 1832, the leadership of Jardine-Matheson and a coalition of other opium merchants got together to purchase an opium clipper known as the "Red Rover," which quickly became the first ship in recorded history to sail to China from India against the wind. This new technology enabled firms like Jardine-Matheson to bring ever-increasing quantities of opium from India to China, at record speed. As discussed below, one important consequence of more rapid connections between India and China was that it changed the calculus of opium pricing in Lintin and along the China coast.
Opium prices, the movement of information, and a race against time
Directly related to the history of sail technology and the centrality of the monsoon to Asian trading patterns, opium profits were highly dependent on taking advantage of differences in opium prices between locations. One example of this from the module is the quote from Captain Rees that headlines the Malwa page. In that example, Captain Rees discusses how the brokers in Shenhu Bay had managed to acquire information about the price of Malwa opium at Lintin and were consequently purchasing large amounts. For Captain Rees, setting prices was a matter of constant anxiety, as he was under pressure to sell as much opium as possible but at as high a price as could be obtained. The ability of his customers in Yakou Village to keep abreast of the price at Lintin limited Rees' ability to sell at inflated prices. For both parties, buying and selling opium was a constant race against time for the latest and best information.
The British East India Company opium auctions in Calcutta were another place where Jardine-Matheson and their competitors had to engage in complex calculations about time. The company's purchasing agents in Calcutta, like Rees in his station on the China coast, were under constant pressure from William Jardine in Guangzhou to make advantageous purchasing decisions, a calculation that could change unpredictably based on the activities of Chinese purchasers and government officials thousands of miles away. In the quote that headlines the Calcutta page of this module, we see Jardine complaining to Rees about the company agent in Calcutta's lack of awareness in failing to ship enough Patna and Benares opium to Lintin. On other occasions, Jardine became furious when the Calcutta agent sent too much opium to China and brought down prices.
It is easy to imagine an organization like the Shi lineage engaging in a similar range of time and price calculation. Like Jardine-Matheson, the Yakou Shi were a diversified and complex business organization, purchasing opium in Shenhu Bay for shipment to places like Taiwan, Ningbo, and ports in North China. A full range of sources do not exist to demonstrate the point, though the combination of materials in the British and Chinese archives do enough to give a clear sense of the size and scope of the Shi lineage's opium operations.
Canton (Guangzhou)
Our friend Allum, the opium broker, has come to represent to us that a friend of his is building a smuggling boat somewhere in your neighbourhood, and requests that we will ask the favour of you to endeavour to afford him any protection which may be in your power, in the event of his being molested by the Mandarins. You must not of course go to the length of committing any acts of violence against the Mandarins, but he thinks the Mandarins will be deterred from giving annoyance by a mere show on your part of a disposition to protect the boat building operation.

William Jardine in Canton to Captain Grant on board the Samarang at Lintin, 1832.*
Common practice in the opium trade was for Chinese buyers to pre-arrange their purchases from the ships at Lintin at the money shops in Guangzhou. For most of the 1830s, William Jardine operated out of the foreign factories in Guangzhou (pictured above), constantly interacting with local Chinese merchants as well as sending and receiving letters with his agents in Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore, London, Macao, Lintin, and along the China coast in places like Shenhu Bay.
In the quote above, William Jardine describes how one of his Chinese partners approached him in Guangzhou in order to request that Jardine's ship at Lintin protect a shipbuilding operation near Lintin from interference by the Chinese government.
* China Trade and Empire: Jardine, Matheson & Co. And the Origins of British Rule in Hong Kong 1827-1843, ed. Alain le Pichon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 162.
Malwa
Malwa has been much inquired after during the last week. They must have heard of the price in Canton. I do not think we could get more than 40-50$ more than the Canton prices. We should have 100 chests up for this market to sell with the Bengal drug.

Captain Rees in Shenhu Bay to William Jardine in Canton, 15 June 1836.*
The historical region of Malwa produced an alternate to the East India Company's monopoly opium from Patna and Benares. Indore, where this page is geotagged, is the largest present-day city in what was once called Malwa.
Malwa opium was packaged in cakes, rather than balls, and exported out of Bombay (Mumbai) rather than Calcutta (Kolkata). Because Malwa was produced outside of the British East India Company monopoly in Patna and Benares, its quality and pricing by the time it reached China was more volatile. The Shi lineage of Yakou Village purchased a great deal of Malwa for resale in Taiwan and North China during the mid-1830s.
The above quote from Captain Rees contextualizes the place of Malwa in the Shenhu Bay opium market during 1836. As Rees tells Jardine in the quotation, the brokers (people from Yakou village and the surrounding area) had a close eye on pricing in Guangzhou and Lintin. Both Rees and his Chinese partners were therefore trying to take advantage of price discrepancies between different opium markets on the China coast.
*Source: JM B2-7, Reel 495, No. 1, 6/15/1836.
Bombay (Mumbai)
Our Opium Market has fluctuated very little since the date of last advices, the 28th ultimo, particularly at Whampoa; while along the Coast prices have been better maintained, but the deliveries have been on a reduced scale. In Macao Malwa fell to 345 dollars per chest, and several hundreds of chests were sent out to Lintin, when the prices, of all kinds, improved a little.

William Jardine in Canton to Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy in Bombay, 13 March 1838.*
Bombay (Mumbai) was the site of auction for Malwa opium, the alternative to Bengal (Patna, Benares) opium exported from Calcutta. Pictured above is a hospital built in 1843 by the eminent Parsee trader Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, a close associate of William Jardine and a major figure in the Malwa opium trade. In the quote above we see William Jardine advising Jejeebhoy of the prices and market fluctuations in Malwa opium during early 1838, as tensions were mounting with the Chinese government in Guangzhou.
*Source: China Trade and Empire: Jardine, Matheson & Co. And the Origins of British Rule in Hong Kong 1827-1843, ed. Alain le Pichon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 337.
Patna
Our average prices are Old Patna $600, New Patna $694.52, New Benares $700.83, and Malwa $684.27. The Malwa was hardly touched until all the other drug was cleared out, and I fell confident you would be satisfied with the price got for the old Patna if you saw the state in which it now is. The balls are dried up and many of them half bouldered away, others which to appearance are perfect rattle when shaken. The opium inside being dried up and shrunk.

Captain Mackay at Lintin to William Jardine in Canton, April 26th, 1834.*
In the 1830s, most of the opium that reached China came from either Patna or Benares (Varanasi), neighboring regions located inland from the port of Calcutta. Opium from Patna and Benares was rolled into large balls, each weighing around 6 pounds, and packed 40 balls per chest for auction in Calcutta and the journey to China. The image above shows a large opium factory in Patna in 1850, just a few years after the events of this module take place.
In the above quote, Captain Mackay informs William Jardine that the 1833 Patna opium is in poor shape and must be sold off at a low price compared to the 1834 Patna.
Below is historian Carl Trocki's description of opium production in Patna:
In Patna, there were 1000 men employed as cakers, who worked from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day in the huge sheds erected for the factory. They labored throughout the hot season in temperatures of up to 40°C (103°F). A bell was rung every twenty minutes and each cake-maker's output was checked. The average output for the Patna factory was between 16,000 and 20,000 cakes daily.**
*Source: MS.JM/B7 26 [Reel 8, No. 67] Mackay to Jardine, 4.26.1834
**Source: Carl Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade, 1750-1950 (Oxon: Routledge, 1999), 70.
Benares (Varanasi)
The Benares is still their favorite…the Amoy men run on the Patna when 5-10 difference, the Chimmo men run on the Benares.

John Rees in Chimmo Bay to William Jardine in Canton, October 19, 1834.*
Benares (Varanasi) was one of the two opium growing regions in Bengal, supplying the auctions in Calcutta (the other was Patna). The value of each year's crop of opium varied year to year, place to place, depending on slight differences in taste, weight, etc. As the quote above illustrates, Chinese buyers in Shenhu Bay (Chimmo) were in 1834 more inclined to purchase Benares, while their competitors in Xiamen (Amoy) were that year buying up a great deal of Patna (when the markup from Lintin prices was under ten taels). These market differences could be very significant to Jardine-Matheson's profit margins, and opium captains like John Rees were constantly working to take advantage of this for their firm.
*Source: JM:B2 7 [R. 495, No. 23] Rees, Quanzhou, 10.19.1834

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The 'Streatham' and the opium clipper 'Red Rover' The ‘Streatham’ with the opium clipper ‘Red Rover’ are shown at anchor in the Hooghly River, Calcutta. The buildings of Calcutta dominate the skyline in the background. A local craft with passengers seen through the louvred canopy is being rowed from the ‘Streatham’. Figures on the shore on the right survey the scene and the nearest man appears to be fishing in the mighty river. Two thirds of the painting is sky which emphasises the vast scale of India.