William Jardine was a Scottish physician, opium merchant and trader who co-founded the Hong Kong based conglomerate Jardine, Matheson & Co. Following his return to England from the Far East, between 1841 and 1843, he was Member of Parliament for Ashburton representing the Whig party.
William John Napier, 9th Lord Napier, Baron Napier FRSE was a British Royal Navy officer and trade envoy in China.
Hong Kong (1800s–1930s) oversaw the founding of the new crown colony of Hong Kong under the British Empire. After the First Opium War, the territory was ceded by the Qing Empire to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland through Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and Convention of Peking (1860) in perpetuity, with additional land was leased to the British under the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory (1898), Hong Kong became one of the first parts of East Asia to undergo industrialisation.
Sir John Francis Davis, 1st Baronet was a British diplomat and sinologist who served as second Governor of Hong Kong from 1844 to 1848. Davis was the first President of Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong.
John Robert Morrison was a British interpreter and colonial official in China. Born in Macau, his father was Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary in China. After his father's death in 1834, Morrison replaced him as Chinese Secretary and Interpreter to the Superintendents of British Trade in China. In 1843, he was appointed as Acting Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong and a member of the Executive and Legislative Councils, but died eight days later in Hong Kong from fever.
Dent & Co. or Dent's, was one of the wealthiest British merchant firms, or Hongs, active in China during the 19th century. A direct rival to Jardine, Matheson & Co, together with Russell & Co., these three companies are recognised as the original Canton Hongs active in early Colonial Hong Kong.
A hong originally designates both a type of building and a type of Chinese merchant intermediary in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China, in the 18–19th century, specifically during the Canton System period.
Rear-Admiral Richard Charles Mayne was a Royal Navy officer and explorer, who in later life became a Conservative politician.
Crosby Ravensworth is a village and civil parish in the Eden district of Cumbria, England. The village is about 4 miles (6.4 km) east of the M6 motorway, and Shap. At the 2001 census the parish had a population of 538, decreasing to 517 at the 2011 Census.
Thomas Richardson Colledge was an English surgeon with the East India Company at Guangzhou (Canton) who served part-time as the first medical missionary in China, and played a role in establishing the Canton Hospital. In 1837 he founded and served as the first president of the Medical Missionary Society of China.
Maulds Meaburn is a village in Cumbria, England. It is located in the Lyvennet Valley and Yorkshire Dales National Park and is 13 miles from Penrith. Its origins are connected with the nearby village King's Meaburn.
Alexander Robert Johnston, FRS was a British colonial official who served twice as Acting Administrator of Hong Kong from 1841 to 1842. He also served in the Executive and Legislative Councils of Hong Kong. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1845 for his work on the natural history of China.
Russell & Company was the largest American trading house of the mid-19th century in China. The firm specialised in trading tea, silk and opium and was eventually involved in the shipping trade.
Thomas Chay Beale was a Scottish merchant and diplomat operating in the Far East during the 19th century. He was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and of the Portuguese Order of Christ.
Daniel Beale (1759–1842) was a Scottish merchant and fur trader active in the Far East mercantile centres of Bombay, Canton and Macau as well as at one time the Prussian consul in China.
Jardine, Matheson & Co., later Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., forerunner of today's Jardine Matheson Holdings, was a Far Eastern company founded in 1832 by Scotsmen William Jardine and James Matheson as senior partners. Trafficking opium in Asia, while also trading cotton, tea, silk and a variety of other goods, from its early beginnings in Canton, in 1844 the firm established its head office in the new British colony of Hong Kong then proceeded to expand all along the China Coast.
John Dent (1821–1892) was an English merchant of the then prominent trading firm Dent & Co. and member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong and Chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council.
John Francis Chomley was an Irish businessman in Hong Kong and China in the mid-19th century. He was the first chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company and member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.
The destruction of opium at Humen began on 3 June 1839 and involved the destruction of 1,000 long tons of illegal opium seized from British traders under the aegis of Lin Zexu, an Imperial Commissioner of Qing China. Conducted on the banks of the Pearl River outside Humen Town, Dongguan, China, the action provided casus belli for Great Britain to declare war on Qing China. What followed is now known as the First Opium War (1839–1842), a conflict that initiated China's opening for trade with foreign nations under a series of treaties with the western powers.
Flass, also called Flass House, is a large Grade II* listed house near the village of Maulds Meaburn, Cumbria, England. It was built in the 19th century in the Neo-Palladian style by the tea and opium traders Lancelot and Wilkinson Dent of Dent & Co. It remained in the hands of the Dent family until 1972, when it was sold to the historian Frank Welsh. It was sold again in 1982 to the solicitor Malcolm Whiteside, who temporarily ran the property as a care home. In 2000, the musician Christine Holmes and her husband Paul Davies bought the property. The pair divorced, and, in 2012, it was discovered that the property had been used by a criminal gang for the cultivation of cannabis. Six men, including Davies, were jailed in 2015. Holmes took control of the property, which was sold at auction in 2019.
