Ethical Branding and Marketing

11   Jardine Matheson

Drugs, War, and Empire

Stan Neal

Introduction

This chapter will examine the transformation of the British merchant firm Jardine Matheson from illicit opium smugglers in nineteenth century China to a modern, multi-national group of companies that is involved in a range of legal business activities. In doing so, it will examine the firm’s historical activities as a classic case study of unethical business and look at how the modern business represents this history. Even British contemporaries in the nineteenth century, who often shared similar assumptions about Western superiority and wanted to open Qing China to free trade, criticized Jardine Matheson’s opium smuggling operation and advocacy for British military action ...