The ''Ewo Hong'' () was a
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
''
hong Hong may refer to:
Places
*Høng, a town in Denmark
*Hong Kong, a city and a special administrative region in China
*Hong, Nigeria
*Hong River in China and Vietnam
*Lake Hong in China
Surnames
*Hong (Chinese name)
*Hong (Korean name)
Organiz ...
'' established by ''Wǔ Guóyíng'' () in
Canton (Guangzhou) in 1783 and later became the leader of the
cohong
The ''Cohong'', sometimes spelled or , a guild of China, Chinese merchants or Hong (business) , ''hongs'', operated the Canton System, import-export monopoly in Canton (present-day Guangzhou) during the Qing dynasty (16441911). During the centu ...
of the
Thirteen Factories
The Thirteen Factories, also known as the , was a neighbourhood along the Pearl River in southwestern Guangzhou (Canton) in the Qing Empire from to 1856 around modern day Xiguan, in Guangzhou's Liwan District. These warehouses and stores were ...
under the stewardship of
Howqua
Wu Bingjian (; 17694 September 1843), trading as "Houqua" and better known in the West as "Howqua", was a hong merchant in the Thirteen Factories, head of the '' E-wo hong'' and leader of the Canton Cohong. He was once the richest man in the wor ...
, who took over in 1803. Ewo later became one of the most successful ''hongs'' and the largest creditor of the
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
, whilst Howqua's personal monetary worth reached more than 26 million
Mexican dollars. As a result of the ''Ewo hong's'' upright and honest reputation,
Jardine, Matheson & Co. later adopted "Ewo" as the Chinese name for their firm.
[ p.12]
Online version at Google books
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References
{{China-hist-stub
History of Guangdong
Companies established in 1783