BOOK REVIEWS
177
documented account of the cut-and-thrust rivalry of the two Hong Kong firms. With the publication of Dr. Le Fevour's thesis* and the recent acceptance of the principle of scholarly access to the records of Jardine Matheson at Cambridge University, we may expect further dissection of this remarkable commercial network. However, one may reasonably doubt whether the account of the working of this system of finance and trade with Shanghai and Hong Kong as the nuclei and the Treaty Ports as the other vital constituents, will be written for a long time. Until it is, the economic history of Hong Kong cannot be studied.
Butterfield and Swire's history, of course, does illustrate some of the principal developments which brought this system to its peak: the hemispheric swing of the firm's trading interests from America to the East (including Australia, about which this study could have been more informative -- apparently no reference was made to the history of the White Star Line published in 1964); the ultimate giving-up of trading activities to concentrate on agency services. The career of John Samuel Swire, too, in its insistence on business honour and rectitude, virtues of the Liverpool business man of the last century, which may strike the present day historian as unctuous, also illustrates crucial changes in business attitudes when we compare the original Taipans with their successors. The Senior was, I venture to think, not untypical in his scruples.
It is precisely because this is an illuminating study of the character of the business man in relation to his partners, clients and rivals which makes it an important contribution to the study of business history.
University of Hong Kong.
ALAN BIRCH
* Western Enterprise in China, 1842-95, to be published shortly as a Harvard Research Monograph.
BOOKS RECEIVED
The Council acknowledges with thanks books received from various publishers during the year, and in particular from the Hong Kong University Press and Oxford in Asia. A list for 1967-1968 will appear in the next issue of the Journal.
BOOK REVIEWS
177
documented account of the cut-and-thrust rivalry of the two Hong Kong firms. With the publication of Dr. Le Fevour's thesis* and the recent acceptance of the principle of scholarly access to the records of Jardine Matheson at Cambridge University, we may expect further dissection of this remarkable commercial network. However, one may reasonably doubt whether the account of the working of this system of finance and trade with Shanghai and Hong Kong as the nuclei and the Treaty Ports as the other vital constituents, will be written for a long time. Until it is, the econo- mic history of Hong Kong cannot be studied.
Butterfield and Swire's history, of course, does illustrate some of the principal developments which brought this system to its peak: the hemispheric swing of the firm's trading interests from America to the East (including Australia, about which this study could have been more informative -- apparently no reference was made to the history of the White Star Line published in 1964); the ultimate giving-up of trading activities to concentrate on agency services. The career of John Samuel Swire, too, in its insistence on business honour and rectitude, virtues of the Liverpool business man of the last century, which may strike the present day historian as unctuous, also illustrates crucial changes in business attitudes when we compare the original Taipans with their successors. The Senior' was, I venture to think, not untypical in his scruples.
It is precisely because this is an illuminating study of the character of the business man in relation to his partners, clients and rivals which makes it an important contribution to the study of business history.
University of Hong Kong.
ALAN BIRCH
* Western_Enterprise in China, 1842-95, to be published shortly as a Harvard Research Monograph.
BOOKS RECEIVED
The Council acknowledges with thanks books received from various publishers during the year, and in particular from the Hong Kong University Press and Oxford in Asia. A list for 1967-1968 will appear in the next issue of the Journal.
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