Showing posts from category: Economic history
From Dead End Kids to Bowery Boys with Several Other Monikers In-Between
As a kid I developed a liking for “Our Gang” comedies, a series of American short films about a gang of poor, mainly white (but including black) children. I enjoyed the good-natured tomfoolery and minor mischief perpetrated by the juvenile gang members, particularly Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat. I’m thankful that I was exposed to the “Our Gang” shorts🅐 as it pointed me towards another cinema series about the same demographic that became part of my standard viewing fodder – the Dead End Kids series of movies and its successors.
While the antics of “Our Gang” were unadulterated if sentimentalised fun, I came to prefer the more serious tone and developed storylines of the “Dead End Kids” (DEK) movies. The early movies were starkly realistic, and this was realism of the grittiest kind, rooted in the unforgiving here and now of grim slum life in America’s depression era. These kids were dirt poor, locked into a daily struggle for survival, taking every opportunity, fair or foul, to fleece or steal from anyone or anything that presented itself. At the same time their brutal experience had made them rebels with a cause – the inequities of capitalist America…impoverished slum boys who never missed a chance to decry or one-up the “better-offs” in society.
The Kids from Dead End: The DEK phenomena had its genesis in a 1935 Broadway play, Dead End🅑, by Sidney Kingsley, featuring a cadre of young actors which would go on to form the nucleus of the gang in the movie series: Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Huntz Hall, Bernard Punsley🅒 and the Gorcey brothers, Leo and David. The play was successful, running for two years, Hollywood mega-mogul Samuel Goldwyn saw the show and was immediately impressed. Goldwyn bought the film rights and made Dead End as a United Artists feature film in 1937, co-starring the Kids alongside Humphrey Bogart. The film was a hit but the boys caused havoc during the production, crashing a truck into a soundstage, prompting an annoyed Goldwyn to unload them to Warner Brothers.
Warners Bros’ crime school graduates: At Warner Brothers the Dead End Kids made six features, typically in supporting roles to big stars (Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Anne Sheridan, John Garfield and Bogart). In They Made me a Criminal (1939) starring Garfield, the Kids don’t make an appearance until 25 minutes into the film. The Warners’ series followed the studio’s formula of serious social crime dramas with the Kids heavily involved in the plot and also lending some comedy relief (‘Dead End Kids’, www.boweryboys.bobfinnan.com). Billy Halop was acknowledged as the leader of the gang and was purportedly paid more than the other boys, leading to some bad feelings within the group. Despite the DEK success at Warners the studio was disenchanted with the group’s off-camera antics (more impromptu hell–raising) and released them from their contracts after their sixth film.
Little Tough Guys: Universal decided to get in on the act, cashing in on the DEK’s appeal with its own (B–movie) series. Billing the gang as the “Little Tough Guys”, Universal made 12 features in the late 1930s–early 40s, featuring at one time or other all of the original Kids except Leo Gorcey. Shemp Howard, one of the popular “Three Stooges”, appeared in two of the LTG movies, and was acknowledged by Huntz Hall as an influence on the slapstick style of comedy that the group later developed.
East Side Kids: The Dead End Kids morphed into a new incarnation called the “East Side Kids” in a series made by Monogram Pictures. These were 22 films made as low-budget imitations of the DEK movies, initially crime melodramas with comedic overtones, but as the series evolved, the comedy angle took greater emphasis. With Halop gone by this time, Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan were now the gang leaders. As the series progressed, the comedy duo of wise guy Leo Gorcey and zany but dim Huntz Hall became the focus in films like Million Dollar Kid and Spooks Run Wild (a horror comedy headlined by an ageing Bela Lugosi) (www.boweryboys.bobfinnan.com). As a variation on the usual criminals that the boys routinely cross swords with, in Let’s Get Tough (1942) they find themselves this time trying to foil Nazi and Japanese saboteurs in the US. A black former child actor of the original Our Gang movies “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison and William (“Billy”) Benedict were added to the ESK retinue of scruffy working class street kids.
Bowery Boys: Stoogesque slapstick and streetwise Abbott and Costello In 1945 the ESK series folded and was replaced by yet another name for the team of screen performers, the “Bowery Boys”🅓. Leo Gorcey this time had an enhanced stake in the enterprise, owning 40% of the production company🅔, acting as producer and contributing to the script. Gorcey also brought his father Bernard to the films’ players. Bobby Jordan left the series again and Gabriel Dell returned. The interaction of Leo Gorcey, with his malapropism-prone utterances as “Slip”, and Hunt as dim-witted sidekick “Sash”, continued to provide the central plank of the humour. The Bowery Boys series—made by Allied Artists, successor studio to Monogram—comprised 48 movies in all. The early efforts continued the standard fare of gangster melodrama, but after “Three Stooges” director Edward Bernds started directing Gorcey and Co, the films resorted more to slapstick comedy, Three Stooges-like wordplay and occasionally to fantasy themes (‘The Bowery Boys: Anything But Routine’, Ivan G. Shreve, Jr Classic Flix, 19-Sep-2013, www.classicflix.com). Abbott and Costello’s influence is also evident, there are obvious echoes of Africa Screams in the Bowery Boys’ Jungle Gents (1954) (‘Dead End Kids’ found new life as ‘Bowery Boys’, Jim Willard, Loveland Reporter-Herald, 07-July-2018, www.reporterherald.com).
By the time the final Bowery Boys film In the Money is made in 1958, the series is looking tired, stale and frayed…only Huntz Hall and David Gorcey remain of the originals (Leo’s ongoing bouts with the demon alcohol saw his forced departure in 1956, replaced by Stanley Clements), the “Kids” were now middle-aged, hardly juvenile delinquent material, and their screen work lacking the verve and punch of earlier days.
🅐 syndicated for television in the 1960s as The Little Rascals
🅑 the “Dead End” tag came from the inscription on the road sign at the river’s edge in the original, 1937 film
🅒 Punsly was the odd one out among the “young punk” band of actors, he stayed in the DEK/ESK series only till 1942 (notching up 19 films) before leaving show biz for good to become a successful physician (later chief of staff at a private hospital in LA)
🅓 the Bowery is a street and neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan, NYC
🅔 Huntz Hall held 10% himself
420 Years Ago, VOC Makes the World’s First IPO
Stock Exchange 1.0
The world’s first known stock exchange is thought to be a market established in Bruges, Belgium, around 1309. This operation was a family concern conducted in the home of textile merchant Robert Van der Burse (or Van “ter Buerse/Buerze”). This type of early market which primarily deals with the exchange of commodities, ie, various agricultural products—and in its modern connotation, also with gas, oil, coal, etc—acquired the name ‘bourse’ from its founder. A bourse (typically European in location) is “a market organised for the purpose of buying and selling securities, commodities, options and other investments” [‘Bourse’, Investopedia, www.investopedia.com]. Another early bourse was located in Antwerp<a̷>.
𝕍𝕒𝕟 𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝔹𝕦𝕣𝕤𝕖: 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕘𝕚𝕟𝕒𝕝 𝕓𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕤𝕖
The Van der Burse exchange was the first organised market, before this landmark development such transaction processes were unorganised and informal – sellers and buyers would meet up one-to-one at specific meeting places such as town squares to conduct their trade <b̷> [‘Creation of the first stock exchange’, www.citeco.fr].
The Dutch, pioneers of capitalism
For the first ‘modern’ securities market we need to look to Belgium’s neighbours, the Dutch. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange is the oldest such market, founded in 1602 with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC). Amsterdam was the first bourse to deal in securities <c̷>. The VOC was empowered with quasi-government and monopoly status by the States General of the Netherlands, granted a 21-year charter to conduct all Dutch trade in Asia. In so doing, financial history was made…the VOC was a world first, a public company founded by a state government. Hitherto the Dutch trading environment comprised a number of competing private companies known as voorcompagnieën or “pre-companies”. By the 1602 Charter, the government merged those small, private companies into one “nationalistic Goliath”, VOC, creating a proto-megacorporation.
𝟙𝟞𝟘𝟚 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕕𝕠𝕔Raising capital At VOC’s commencement of business it held an unprecedented initial public offering (IPO). The company’s directors opened up share-holding to all Dutchmen by subscription (while investing 12,000 guilders of their own money up front). The public nature of the share issue was its revolutionary feature, hitherto predecessor companies (like the Oude Compagnie) had raised capital from a small circle of private investors. Some investors balked at the opportunity offered by VOC, wary of tying up their precious savings for such a long period (ten years). Concessions made by the VOC eased these concerns – in a subsequent amendment to the charter, investors were permitted to on-sell their shares to a third party prior to ten years [‘The world’s first IPO’, Lodewijk Petram, The World’s First Stock Exchange’, 15 October 2020, www.worldsfirststockexchange.com].
𝔸𝕞𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕕𝕒𝕞 𝕊𝕥𝕠𝕔𝕜 𝔼𝕩𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕓𝕦𝕝𝕝What would NOT have seemed novel to financial market investors of the day was the ‘office’ for doing business…initially lacking a business premises the VOC—after the fashion of the Bourses’ 14th century Bruges exchange—issued an open invitation for would-be investors to come to the private home of the company co-founder Dirck van Os to do the paperwork and deposit their money. Ultimately, by the time subscriptions closed, some 1,143 individuals <d̷> had invested a total of 3,674,945 guilders in the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (including Dirck van Os’ own maid!) [Petram].
ℕ𝔸𝕊𝔻𝔸ℚ (ℙ𝕙𝕠𝕥𝕠: 𝕄𝕒𝕣𝕜𝕖𝕥𝕤𝕎𝕚𝕜𝕚)
Footnote: the VOC’s IPO had profound ramifications, fundamentally altering the nature of investing. Originally intended to facilitate the financing of risky capital-intensive ventures, it “inadvertently created an alternative for investor beyond fixed income investments, marking the beginning of retail investing in equities” [‘World’s First IPO: Dutch East India Co’, Suede Investing, www.suedeinvesting.com].
•°¯`••••´¯°• •°¯`••••´¯°•
<a̷> the most famous bourse today is that of the Paris Stock Exchange
<b̷> including the square in front of the Van der Burse residence
<c̷> printed stocks and bonds, debt and other interests in companies, government and private businesses
<d̷> in addition to the six directors
1898, A Vintage Year for United States Empire Building
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography” ~ Mark Twain (attributed)✱
〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥
The axiomatic nature of the above much-referenced quotation resounds most strongly in the year 1898. In that year the US expanded its offshore territorial acquisitions in different parts of the Pacific and in the Caribbean. It secured the islands of Cuba, the Philippines❂, Guam and Puerto Rico as a result of a short, opportunistic, one-sided war with a declining European power. At the same time Washington annexing the Hawaiian Islands, closed the door on four years of ‘independent’ republicanism which followed a successful coup by American businessmen against the indigenous Hawaiian monarchy.
🔺 Flag of the short-lived Hawaiian Republic
What triggered US involvement in a Cuban conflict against far-off Spain? The immediate pretext was the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbour. The explosion is generally believed to have been an accident but leading American newspapers (the Hearst press and to a lesser extent the Pulitzer publications) drove the charge of war jingoism within the country, declaring Spain culpable for the loss of life on the Maine. This and the ongoing reporting of the Cuban insurrection which deliberately exaggerated Spanish atrocities against the Cubans—examples of the “yellow journalism”◬ practiced especially by Hearst—helped to create a groundswell of popular support and agitation for war whilst boosting the newspapers’ sales.
🔺 “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” (source: www.pri.org)
Humanitarian concern for the Cuban people? In response to the charge that the US engineered the war as a grab for territory (á la Mexico 1846), apologists for the US intervention clothed the action in the garb of a humanitarian attempt to free the Cuban people from the colonial yoke of imperial Spain [Foner, Philip S. “Why the United States Went to War with Spain in 1898.” Science & Society, vol. 32, no. 1, 1968, pp. 39–65. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/404402321. Accessed 21 July 2020]. The McKinley Administration in Washington DC also justified it as an imperative to act given the political instability in Cuba, so close to US soil, and certainly Washington as the hegemonic regional power with a self-appointed role as regional ‘policeman’ had an interest in ridding the Western Hemisphere of the remnants of an old European colonial power [‘The Spanish-American War, 1898’, Office of The Historian, www.history.state.gov/].
Contemporary criticisms of aggressive US foreign policy Washington’s rapid trajectory towards war in 1898 drew a skeptical response internationally. Keir Hardie, British labour leader, stated that he “cannot believe in the purity of the American motive”, seeing rather the hand of “trusts and Wall Street financiers intent on extending American dominance over Cuba, Latin America, and the Far East”. The French government agreed that the professed humanitarian concerns were “merely a disguise for (US) commercial desires” to conquer the Caribbean and Latin America. Non-mainstream press in the US like the socialist The People and the New York Tribune argued that the US government ’s real aim was to ”divert attention from economic evils at home” and to protect the US’s extensive interests in Cuba [Foner, Philip S. “Why the United States Went to War with Spain in 1898.” Science & Society, vol. 32, no. 1, 1968, pp. 39–65. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/404402321. Accessed 21 July 2020].
An economics-driven war In fact economics was the principal driver of America’s intervention in Spanish Cuba. First, the US was massively invested in the island in the 1890s, importing sugar (predominantly), plus tobacco and minerals from Cuba…the US’s Cuban business ventures were valued at about $50 million in 1895 [‘American Business in Cuba 1898-1959: A Brief Overview’, (Lisa Reynolds Wolfe), Havana Project, 17-Aug-2011, www.havanaproject.com]. The Maine was in Havana harbour to protect these same American interests when it met with disaster. So, rather than a humanitarian motive to aid the beleaguered Cubans, the intervention can be seen as pure economic self-interest: “halting a nationalistic revolution or social movement that threatened American interests” and the subsequent withholding of sovereignty to Cubans (and to Filipinos) [Paterson, Thomas G. “United States Intervention in Cuba, 1898: Interpretations of the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War.” The History Teacher, vol. 29, no. 3, 1996, pp. 341–361. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4944551 . Accessed 21 July 2020].
🔺 President McKinley
The contemporary state of the American economy was a factor in America’s timing to act. Economic depression and unemployment was plaguing the country. New markets needed to be found for US goods, this meant not only Cuba and the American ’backyard’, but even extending to the Philippines and the lucrative Chinese market (Paterson). Tom Fiddick argues that the real reason President McKinley backed by the American capitalist class opted for war—having seen Spain‘s failure to pacify the Cuban rebels—was to make certain that the insurectos did not succeed in liberating the island and thereby pose a threat to US business interests in Cuba [Fiddick, Tom. “Some Comments on Philip S. Foner’s “Why the United States Went to War with Spain”.” Science & Society 32, no. 3 (1968): 323-27. Accessed July 22, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/40401358].
🔺 Battle of Guantánamo Bay (Cuba)
US strategy thinking around imperialist objectives was evident prior to the move to war in 1898 – plans were already afoot for the establishment of naval bases in the strategically important Caribbean and in Hawaii, a precondition to expanding economically further into Latin America and into Asian markets. This “game plan” also envisioned US control of the Isthmus of Panama, an objective secured a few years after the victory over Spain (Foner).
Underpinning ideology for upping territorial expansion The hawkish US foreign policy in 1898 accords with the prevailing 19th century belief of “Manifest Destiny”, a view that settlers in the US were destined to expand inexorably across the continent of North America◙. Correspondence between key players (T Roosevelt and HC Lodge) disclose that the McKinley Administration was committed—before the outbreak of hostilities—to “intervention in Cuba as a stepping stone for expansion in the Far East through the acquisition of Spain’s Pacific possessions”. Foner notes that Cuba comprised the ‘fulcrum’ providing the opportunity for US occupancy of the Philippines as “a base at the doorway to China’s markets” for US capitalists. Also shaping this was the influence of Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis—the idea that American democracy was defined by a moving frontier line—if America’s frontier at home was closing off as was thought by some, then the most viable course may be to seek new frontiers abroad. The increasingly dominant current in international thought, social Darwinism, was also informing American thinking…the national assertiveness shown in 1898 can be seen as a quantum leap in the “deliberate, calculated pursuit of United States’ greatness” (Paterson).
🔻 Battle of Manila Bay (Phil.)
Hawaii, a foothold on the “American Lake” The groundwork for the US’s absorption of the Hawaiian islands as part of the Manifesto Destiny credo was laid five years earlier when a group of American sugar planters under Sanford B Dole✦ overthrew Queen Liliuokalani, replacing the monarchy with a provisional government with Dole as president. The coup was tacitly recognised by the US government (with US marines despatched to Hawaii to protect US citizens), although President Cleveland tried unsuccessfully to reinstate the monarchy. His successor William McKinley, recognising the strategic importance of Pearl Harbour as a naval base in the war with Spain, “rubber-stamped” the formal annexation of the islands by the US in August 1898 [‘Americans overthrow Hawaiian monarchy, History, www.history.com/].
🔺 US sailors and marines in Honolulu c.1894
Footnote: A “Spanish-American War” Thomas G Patterson notes the exclusionist nature of the name given to the 1898 conflict – the omission of reference to Cuba and Philippines in the title—in effect “air-brushing” the native populations out of the conflict—was (Paterson suggests) an attempt by the victors to obscure uncomfortable truths, the denial of full-fledged independence to Cubans and Filipinos once freed from Spanish control, and to try to avoid America’s role in the affair being labelled as ‘imperialist’ (Paterson).
🔻 1900 map (Source: Pinterest)
PostScript: The Filipino insurgency After the Spanish defeat Filipino nationalists under Emilio Aguinaldo asserted the Philippines’ independence (proclaiming the First Philippine Republic) in 1899. This action was opposed by the US and a conventional-cum-guerrilla war ensued until 1902 when US forces finally subdued Aguinaldo’s army and the Philippines were made an unincorporated territory of the US (although a number of splinter groups of local insurrectos continued to fight the US military occupation for several years) [‘The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902’, Office of The Historian, www.history.state.gov/].
🔻 Flag of the República Filipino
◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢
✱ this famous but elusive quote has also been attributed, in slightly modified form, to Ambrose Bierce
❂ the US government paid Spain $20 million, compensation for the loss of infrastructure in the Philippines
◬ characterised by sensationalism (eg, eye-catching headlines) typically with scant regard for accuracy
◙ US business giant Standard Oil for instance talked about its ”Manifest Destiny being in Asia” (Foner)
✦ calling themselves the “Committee of Safety”
Ewo and Taikoo: Two of the Legendary Free Market Hongs of British Hong Kong (The “Movers and Shakers”)
(Image: www.travelsfinder.com)
No organisation has left a larger footprint on Hong Kong‘s long colonial experience under the British (1841-1997) than the hongs (see Endnote). And one British hong that has been especially significant in shaping the course of British (and beyond) Hong Kong has been Jardine, Matheson. The company under the direction of Scots William Jardine and James Matheson arrived in Hong Kong on the ground floor, securing lot No. 1 on Hong Kong Island in the initial land sale by the British colonial administrators in 1841 [‘Jardine, Matheson – company history’, www.jardines.com].
⍗ Jardine’s original business premises on Causeway Bay
Jardine, Matheson Co Hong Kong replaced the firm’s previous base in Canton (Guangzhou). From Hong Kong (which soon become Jardine, Matheson’s headquarters) and from the startup of it’s Shànghâi operation a couple of years later, the company laid the foundations of it’s fortune initially from a highly profitable trade of smuggling opium (as well as tea, silk and cotton) into mainland China from South Asia. Jardine, Matheson quickly diversified into more ethical and legal enterprises, adding steamships to their portfolio from the 1850s (China Coast Steam Navigation Co, Indo-China Steam Navigation Co, Yangtśe Steam Navigation Co) which serviced the trade routes to Japan, Singapore, Calcutta, Manila and Vladivostok [‘Jardine, Matheson & Co. Steam Nav. Co / Indo-China Steam Nav. Co / Yangtse S.N. Co.’, www.theshipslist.com].
Taipan Wm Jardine ⍗
Jardine Matheson, a ubiquitous hong Over the years Jardine, Matheson (JM Co) continued to diversify—cotton mills, property, breweries, insurance, financiers (of the first railway in China), sugar plantations, etc. All the while extending it’s trade links – Europe, Africa, Australia, America. Later JM Co got into hotels, motor vehicles, food and hygiene product wholesaling and so on. They functioned as Far East agents – for gunmakers amongst other manufacturers. JM Co even acted in a para-government capacity for consuls for foreign powers doing business in the region, as did other hongs [Jan Morris, Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire, (2000)].
Hong Kong Island ⍗
Butterfield and Swire This particular British hong was something of a latecomer to Hong Kong compared to the pioneering Jardine, Matheson Co. The B&S trading house arrived on the Island in 1869. But Butterfield and Swire did not waste any time in developing into one of the most powerful players in the territory. The driving force behind the company was John Samuel Swire✱. Previously, Butterfield, Swire and his brother William, had started a shipping and trading business in Shanghai. The Swire hong’s road to riches was predicated, not on the illicit drug trade like JM Co, but on a combination of shipbuilding, sugar-refining, banking, insurance, mining, railroad building and other later entrepreneurial pursuits in the Far East, such as bottling Coca-Cola for Asia’s markets. Swire’s diverse subsidiaries have included the Taikoo Sugar Refinery, Taikoo Dockyard – which built mainly steamboats for the China Navigation Co, another Swire subsidiary. Since the 20th century another star in the business stable of the Swire Group☒ is the leading Asian airline Cathay Pacific. Early on Swire’s was also an agent for the Blue Funnel cruise ship line [Morris; ‘Butterfield and Swire’, (School of Oriental and African Studies, London University), The National Archives, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk].
Taipan JS Swire, “the Senior” ⍐
(Photo: www.industrialhistoryhk.org)
JS Swire’s leadership and business style was unequivocally ruthless and uncompromising, he was very much of the “take-no-prisoners”, old school of business. Under “The Senior” Swire, the company played a telling part in driving some of the other Hong Kong frontier merchants into eventual business oblivion – as happened with two pioneering hongs, Dent and Co and Russell and Co (Morris).
Jardine, Matheson v Swire/Ewo v Taikoo☒ Swire‘s great and enduring rival in Hong Kong (and in the East) has been JM Co. For both hongs in the formative years the main game was about buying and selling in China for the European market. As both firms added more business pursuits to their respective China Sea empires, they came more into competition with each other. Swire’s Quarry Bay Taikoo Dockyard and sugar refinery for instance was in stiff competition with Jardine’s Kowloon Whampoa dockyard and refinery [‘Taikoo Sugar Refinery’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
⍗ SS Shuntien, built at Taikoo Docks 
Dynastic hongs with staying power The Jardine presence in Honk Kong and at the helm of the company continues to this day through the Keswick family, ancestors of founder William Jardine’s sister. In a similar vein, the Swire name retains a connection with the present Swire Group (current conglomerate chairman Barnaby Swire is a descendent of John Samuel Swire and there are other ‘Swires’ in the management hierarchy).
(Photo: www.hkland.com/)
1984 and beyond After several years of tortuous negotiations between the UK Thatcher government and China agreement was finally reached to hand over Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997. This left Swires and Jardines, two of the British hongs with most at stake, with the thorny issue of whether to stay in the erstwhile British colony or not under the hard-to-predict communists. Swires, who had earlier pulled its businesses out of China four year after the communist takeover (to later return), chose to keep its operational base in Hong Kong. Swires sought to work with the Chinese regime, entering into airline deals to give the PRC an interest in Cathay Pacific and secure a domestic foothold for itself. The Jardines conglomerate opted for a different strategy, choosing in 1984 to cut and run, switching its legal domicile from Hong Kong to Bermuda and delisting on the HK Stock Exchange in favour of London and Singapore. This move earned Jardines the ire of Beijing⇟. Even after the ink was dry on the hand-over decision, JM Co continue to lobby the British government hard (with Simon Keswick particularly vocal) to keep the territory out of Beijing’s clutches [Felix Patrikeeff, Mouldering Pearl: Hong Kong at the Crossroads, (1989)].
By the turn of the 21st century JM Co had regained ground from a successful drive into Southeast Asia markets and had once again firmly secured a beachhead on mainland China [‘A tale of two hongs’, The Economist, 30-Jun-2007, www.theeconomist.com ; ‘Jardine Matheson Returns to China’, The Economist, 02-Jul-2015, www.theeconomist.com].
Postscript: Tension between government and the merchant class Officially, Hong Kong was run during the British era by a succession of governors, appointed from Whitehall. However a fundamental difference in raison d’être existed between the governors and the taipans. The governors were about the Imperial interest of Britain, in practical terms they sought to raise sufficient revenue to fund the colony’s administration. The sole concern of the plutocrats, the merchants, was self-enrichment and their natural inclination was to resist all efforts of the governor to raise taxes…this made for a generally very rocky relationship between the Crown Colony’s two power blocks with antithetical interests (Morris).
Endnote: Hongs and taipans
The term ‘hong’ (major foreign trading houses based in Hong Kong to trade with China) derives apparently from the Chinese word cohong, used to describe the guilds of Chinese merchants operating Canton’s trade with the West prior to 1842 (the “Thirteen Factories” or Canton System). In British Hong Kong each hong was headed up by a taipan (or series of taipans) who was the top boss man in the trading company. The hongs employed native (Chinese) personnel, called compradors, who acted as local “go-betweens” to facilitate business for the firms.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
✱ “the Butterfield” in the partnership didn’t last long in Hong Kong with the autocratic Swire edging him into retirement within a short time ☒ both trading houses adopted Chinese business names: Ewo (JM Co) means ” State of happy harmony”; Taikoo (Swire) means “Great and ancient” ⇟ China already held a long-lingering grudge against JM Co … company principal William Jardine was one of the main advocates for Britain to take action against the Chinese Empire in retaliation for it closing down the lucrative opium trafficking trade (leading to the First Opium War)
Inter-war Shànghâi: A Cocktail of Espionage, Rapid Wealth Creation, Opulent Grandeur and Glamour—in a “United Nations“ of Competing Interests
Shànghâi by the late 1920s, and 1930s, was an exemplar of cosmopolitanism. The city’s pluralism, including a significant interracial element, made it stand out not just from the rest of a largely homogenous China, but from just about anywhere else on the globe. A key ingredient in Shànghâi‘s cosmopolitan character at this time was the trifurcation of the city. As a consequence of the city’s vicissitudes in the 19th century, Shànghâi, notwithstanding China’s retention of sovereignty over the city, was formally divided into three sections, two of which were foreign controlled.
French Concession
The smallest section was the French Concession (Fàguó zūjiè), in the puxi (west) part of the old city (roughly corresponding to the districts of Luwan and Xuhui in contemporary Shànghâi)—best known today as a prized residential location and the stylish centre of retail fashion in the city. The French, following suit from the British, extracted a concession from the territorial governors in 1849 and engaged in extra-territorial expansion over the ensuing decades. The French Concession had a consul-general appointed from Paris and maintained its own force of gendarmes.
(The SMC flag, with a motto which preached ‘togetherness’)
Shànghâi International Settlement
Originally both the British and the American Wàiguó rén (foreigners)—the Shanghailanders as they styled themselves—had their own separate concessions, but the two enclaves merged in 1863 to form the International Settlements. The international communities, in the main dominated by the British and to a lesser degree the Americans (but also comprising smaller communities of other nationalities, mainly Germans, Italians, Dutch and Danish) who had their own police and fire services. The British and American expats, when they felt that their highly lucrative interests were threatened (as was the case in the 1927 political crisis), did not hesitate to call in the British Army and the US Marines. Both the British/International and French jurisdictions relied heavily on local Chinese for the bulk of their forces [‘The Shanghai Settlements’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Chinese Greater Shànghâi
The third and largest section was the area given over to the Chinese themselves and run by the Chinese Municipality of Greater Shànghâi. Basically, this area surrounded most of the foreign concession territory (especially to it’s south and west) and comprised the parts of Shànghâi that the British et al and the French were not interested in, having already had their pick of the prime locations for themselves, close to and along the Bund [‘The Shanghai International Settlements’, Wiki].
(Cartography: Bert Brouwenstijn, VU University, Amsterdam)
A fourth concession, the “Japanese concession”
In effect, the large and increasing numbers of Japanese living in Shànghâi by this time (including armed garrisons), had resulted in the creation of an unofficial ”Japanese Concession”. This de facto concession was located in the Hongkew (now Hóngkôu) district of Shànghâi (just north of the Whangpoo’s (Huangpu’s) confluence with the Soochew (now Suzhou) Creek). Ultimately, after the Pearl Harbour attack, the Japanese extended its hold over the rest of Shànghâi except the French Concession which Nazi Germany allowed it’s Vichy French ‘puppet’ allies to retain (until 1943 when the Vichy were forced to hand it over to Imperial Japan).
Shànghâi, the fabled metropolis
By the early 1930s Shànghâi had established itself as one of the most exceptional and distinctively dazzling societies on earth. It’s population had hit three million (making it the fifth largest city in the world[𝕒]), of which somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 were foreigners. The Thirties also witnesses two huge influxes of refugees into the city—European, mainly German, Jews fleeing the murderous repression of the Third Reich and reactionary White Russians fleeing Bolshevik retribution in Stalin’s Soviet Union and republics. Both of these ’stateless’ exo-groups were the fortunate beneficiaries of Shànghâi’s status as an open door city…neither passports or visas were required to enter the city [‘Shanghai in the 1930s’, World History, http://world history.us].
🔺 Sassoon’s ‘Cathay’ , a Bund icon but a slightly(sic) over-the-top self-comparison (Source: P Hibberd, The Bund Shanghai: China Faces West (2007))
Economics and architecture: A modern city
The early ‘30s, the Great Depression may have been ravaging the world but Shanghai was prospering…Shànghâi’s flourishing affluence meant rapidly made fortunes and a privileged lifestyle – for some at least within Shànghâi society…most notably and obviously for the advantaged foreigners. Businessmen such as Victor Sassoon (financier and hotelier) and the Renwick brothers (Jardine Matheson), profited from cheap local labour, laying the foundation for their fabulous stores of wealth[𝕓]. Brits like Tony Renwick and Anglophile American Stirling Fessenden also controlled the Shànghâi Municipal Council ensuring that local public policy in the Internationals’ concession would be favourable to Anglo business interests [‘Shanghai Municipal Council’, (International Settlement 1863-1941), www.links4seo.com/].
A further, external factor which allowed Shànghâi to prosper was that, unlike the rest of China which was divided up between different regional warlords, the city was monopolised by the foreign merchant class (World History). The warlords (and Republic of China leader Chang Kai-shek) were not able to penetrate this localised power base.
The Bund‘s modernity
And the wealth realised was certainly of the conspicuous kind, one glance down the Bund (Wàitān), the riverfront promenade, confirmed that. It was replete with grand financial and trading houses, hotels and nightclubs, many in elegant Art Deco or Neo-Classical style [𝕔]. The Bund symbolised the city’s new wealth and modernity – and contained Shànghâi’s version of ”Wall Street”. Shànghâi, even at this time, had more skyscrapers than anywhere outside of the US (World History). In nearby Nanking Road (now Nanjing Rd), was the commercial heart of Shànghâi, housing the leading retail merchants of the city such as the Sincere Company Ltd and Wing On. Fashion in Shànghâi echoed the city architecture’s modernity, the latest in-vogue styles were all the rage for the Shanghainese [‘Shanghai History’, Lonely Planet, www.lonelyplanet.com].
Nightlife and recreational pursuits
Shànghâi’s business nouveau rich, when they weren’t celebrating or listening to jazz music at one of the Bund’s many nightclubs, Ciro’s, Casanova’s, the Paramount Dance Hall or at the Canidrome Ballroom in the French Concession (originally a greyhound racing track!), could often be found at the Shànghâi Jockey Club racecourse betting along with thousands of others, Chinese and foreigners, on “the strange little Mongolian ponies” especially imported for racing (World History).
Espionage in Shànghâi: something of a free-for-all
With so many different nationalities in Shànghâi at the same time, all with competing and vested interests, it is hardly surprising that the city was a hotbed of espionage especially as the Thirties drew on inexorably towards world war. Spies and counter-spies abounded…most of the main players were actively working on the ground (or under it) in Shànghâi at this juncture – the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), as well intelligence units from Russia, Japan, France, Germany and the US [Bernard Wassermann, Secret War in Shanghai: Treachery, Subversion and Collaboration in the Second World War (2017, 2nd Ed.)].
In the next blog piece I will turn my attention to the other, seamier side of the Shànghâi story of the interwar period – the city’s association, you might say preoccupation, with sin and crime, another face of Shànghâi’s decadence in the Twenties and the Thirties.
Footnote: Shànghâi, location, location … Foreign trading powers like the British had initially preferred the port of Canton[𝕕] to Shànghâi, but by the late 19th century the latter had become the big trading nations’ principal “treaty port” in the Far East. Shànghâi‘s geographical position was fundamental to its eventual prominence: it had become by this time “the central clearinghouse of waterborne trade between the entire Yangtse River system and the rest of the world”, accounting for 50% of China’s foreign trade. It’s port comprising 35 miles of wharves could accommodate >170 ships and 500 sea-going junks at a time (Wassermann).
Canidrome Ballroom🔺(“canine track”)
⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼
[𝕒] behind London, New York, Paris and Berlin
[𝕓] the wealth of the Shanghai foreign elite had its genesis in the aftermath of the Opium Wars. The European and North American powers used the springboard of the “unequal treaties” to extend their existing privileges to their countries’ merchant classes. Within the designated enclaves foreigners could carry out their business in accord with their own laws, free from Chinese taxes and with the added bonus that the Chinese courts and bureaucracy couldn’t interfere with or impede their commercial activities (Wassermann).
[𝕔] the line-up on the Bund included the Jardine Matheson Building ( early opium traders), Sassoon House, (Standard) Chartered Bank, H & S Bank (now HSBC), Union Building, APC Club, the Shànghâi Club, the Cathay Hotel, Paramount Dance Hall and the French, US, German and British consulates
[𝕕] modern day Guangzhou
The Luddites of Britain’s Industrial Revolution: Technophobes with an Excessively Destructive Bent or Practitioners of Last Resort Workplace Bargaining?
The Luddites of Britain’s Industrial Revolution: Technophobes with an Excessively Destructive Bent or Practitioners of Last Resort Workplace Bargaining?
We’ve all heard the term bandied round—anyone who is reluctant to embrace new technology or the world of computers is labelled a Luddite. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a person who is opposed to the introduction of new working methods, especially new machines”. Many of us would also have an inkling of the term’s origins, deriving from the group of English workers in the early 19th century whose method of resisting new work technologies in Georgian factories and mills took on a very “hands-on”, destructive manner. Beginning with weavers in the textile industry in Nottinghamshire taking to the new machines with sledgehammers in protest, the movement soon spread to other parts of the Midlands and the North of England.
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Rampage against the machine provokes a repressive reaction The British government wasted little time in sending in an army of soldiers(𝓪 ) in defence of capital. Their assignment was to protect the factories and quell the workers’ revolts. Parliament enacted laws making the workers’ trail of destruction against the machines a capital offence, and many of the offenders were summarily and violently dealt with (shootings, hangings, transportation to New Holland for 14 years). Consequently, the Luddite movement lost energy and cohesion and petered out within a few years [‘The Original Luddites Raged Against the Machine of the Industrial Revolution’, (Christopher Klein), History, 04-Jan-2019, www.history.com].
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Class loyalty The ruling elite of the day viewed the actions of the workers in attacking the private property of employers as merely bloody-minded vandalism, a perspective that still held an attraction for some modern conservative historians in the 20th century… eminent historian JH Plumb for instance dismissed the Luddites’ revolts as nothing more than “pointless, frenzied industrial jacquerie”. But was that all there was to it, nihilism, the mindless, purposeless, random savagery of working class vandals?
In a ground-breaking article in the early Fifties radical historian EJ Hobsbawn took issue with the conventional “nihilistic sabotage” view of historians like Plumb. Hobsbawn places the rebellious workers’ actions in their proper context, that of the Industrial Revolution and the economic vicissitudes of the period. The machine-breaking by the weavers and other workers was a direct action form of industrial strategy initiated by labour, Hobsbawn calls it “collective bargaining by riot” [EJ Hobsbawn, ‘The Machine Breakers’, Past and Present, No 1, (Feb., 1952), pp.57-70]. EP Thompson describes Luddism as “a violent eruption of feeling against unrestrained industrial capitalism” [E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, (1966)](𝓫).
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The threat accompanying automation Workers such as the weavers in Nottinghamshire around 1811/12 foresaw the dire implications for them of the introduction of new inventions like the mechanical loom. The economic downturn Britain experienced during the drawn-out Napoleonic Wars resulted in loss of profits for the merchants who owned the mills and factories. But it harmed working families even more…unemployment was widespread, food became scarce and therefore more expensive. Magnifying the problem, trades like the stocking knitters and the lace workers were in decline. By using the new technology, employers could increase production allowing them to engage untrained workers at lower wages. This directly and adversely affected the weavers and other artisans who had spent years learning and honing the skills of their craft. Now the new machines were being taken over by untrained workers who produced inferior work. The job security of textile craftsmen were thus imperilled, by the use of the (new) machinery in (as they saw it) “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to circumvent standard labour practices(𝓬). The danger identified, the textile workers found themselves limited in the forms of protest available to them—they could not legally form trade unions and they could not strike(𝓭 ). Smashing knitting frames and other machines was conceivably the only effective way to protest the inevitable erosion of their economic livelihood [George Binfield, quoted in Klein; ‘What is a Luddite?’, wiseGEEK, www.wisegeek.com].
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Not technophobes of the Industrial Revolution Hobsbawn is at pains to stress that the protesting mill and factory workers bore no hostility to the machines per se(𝓮). Notwithstanding that the concept of trade unionism was inchoate and still barely nascent at this time, Hobsbawn describes the “wrecking (as) simply a technique of trade unions in the period before (and during) the early Industrial Revolution“. A more contemporary historian George Binfield concurs with Hobsbawn’s central thesis, stating that the derisory ‘technophobe’ tag is a mischaracterisation of the movement—the textile artisans were not against the new technology of the Industrial Revolution, but against the use of it to produce shoddy clothing and depress the wages of skilled workers (Binfield in Klein)(𝓯). Actually, far from being inept, many of the Luddites in the textile industry were highly skilled machine operators [‘What the Luddites Really Fought Against’, (Richard Conniff), Smithsonian Magazine, March 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com].
Poster notice offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of the frame-breakers who attacked George Ball’s Notts. workshop in 1812 🔻
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Antecedents and successors of the Luddites Luddism, as Donald MacKenzie put it, “was neither mindless, nor completely irrational, nor completely unsuccessful” [DA MacKenzie, ‘Marx and the Machine’, Technology and Culture, Vol 25, No 3, July 1984, pp.473-503]. Hobsbawn scuttles any suggestion that the Luddites’ movement was a one-off phenomena. Arguing that it’s antecedents can be traced back as far as the 17th century, he details instances of other English workers utilising the same industrial tactic as the Luddites—West of England clothing industry , 1710s-1720s; weavers in Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Devon, 1726/27(𝓰); rioting of textile workers in Melksham (Wilts), 1738; and not confined to the textiles business – coal miners employed the same wrecking tactic in the Northumberland coal-field in the 1740s (𝓱). Hobsbawn notes that the Luddites’ tactic of destroying the tools of production in a calculated fashion did not end with the movement’s swift demise. He cites the riots in Bedlington (Durham) in 1831 in which strikers wilfully wrecked the capitalists’ winding-gear.
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No unmitigated failure; the preventative measures tactic Although the Luddites’ revolt ended in suppression and broken dreams, Hobsbawn makes the case that there were successes in the workers’ efforts in other episodes of machine-breaking. In some instances, the mere threat from disgruntled craftsmen to wreak havoc on factories and mills was sufficient to dissuade some employers from introducing the machinery as planned, eg, this was the case earlier with weavers in Norwich and shearmen in Wiltshire. Hobsbawn concludes that “invariably, the employer, faced with such hazards” decided to delay or not implement the new technology, cognisant of the latent threat to his property and even his own life. In several of the cases cited by the historian, the threats were a successful bargaining tool to stop employers from cuttingworkers‘ wages, and in the instance of the Northumberland coal miners, their provocative action in burning the mine’s pit-head machinery actually won themselves “a sizeable pay rise”.
🔺‘Ned Ludd’ (sometimes transcribed as Ned Lud) (Image: Granger Collection, NY)
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Footnote: The eponymous ‘leader’ of the movement The Luddites’ leader was supposed to be one “Ned Ludd”, sometimes referred to as ‘General‘, ‘Captain’ or even ‘King’ Ludd. Purportedly he was an apprentice in the late 1770s who was either beaten or berated by his master and took revenge by damaging the factory’s stocking frame. It seems that in all probability Ned is apocryphal in the fashion of Robin Hood, the English personification of the mythical figure invoking social justice. Ned can be viewed as a symbolic leader for the wrongly-treated to rally round in pursuit of righting (in this instance) the workplace injustices foisted upon skilled industrial craftsmen (Ludd was even said to reside in Sherwood Forest, another nod to the inspiration of the Robin Hood legend in his invention).
(𝓪) some 12,000 troops in total were despatched, more than the number under the command of Wellington in the concurrent Peninsula War, a classic, heavy-handed overkill by the British authorities
(𝓫) one writer applies the term “labor strategists” to the Luddites as a de facto vocational appellation, [Brian Merchant, ‘You’ve Got Luddites All Wrong’, (Tech By Vice), 03-Sep-2014, www.vice.com]
(𝓬) being prevented from forming trade unions left industrial workers already behind the eight-ball when IR mechanisation came along—they were unable to establish a minimum wage, establish workers’ pensions and set standard working conditions
(𝓭) the technology the Luddites railed against did not necessarily need to be new, the stocking frame for instance had been invented 200 years earlier (Conniff)
(𝓮) nor were they “heroic defenders of a pre-technological way of life” – as romantically portrayed later in some quarters (Conniff)
(𝓯) as Binfield contends, the Luddites were in fact willing to adapt to mechanisation…it was the direction that enhanced productivity was heading—enriching the merchant owners, not the workers—that was their beef. Their objective was a share of those profits, or at the very least, a decent wage
(𝓰) their attack on the property and materials of masters and blacklegs had the positive outcome of gaining them a “collective contract” of sorts
(𝓱) workers in the East Midlands hosiery trade also resorted to frame-breaking as part of the riots in 1778 to protest wage erosion…Hobsbawn calls these hose-makers “the ancestors of Ludditism”