A ''hong'' () originally designates both a type of building and a type of Chinese merchant intermediary in

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

(formerly known as Canton), Guangdong, China, in the 18–19th century, specifically during the Canton System period.

Guangzhou

The name ''hong'' () originally referred to the row of factories built outside of the city walls of Guangzhou 广州 (Canton), near the Pearl River. The Thirteen Factories were used during the Canton System period to host foreign traders and the products purchased, under the aegis of the ''

cohong The ''Cohong'', sometimes spelled or , a guild of Chinese merchants or ''hongs'', operated the import-export monopoly in Canton (present-day Guangzhou) during the Qing dynasty (16441911). During the century prior to the First Opium War of 1 ...

''. The Hong (or Factories) were usually owned by hong merchants such as Pan Zhencheng (Poankeequa 1). The Guangzhou Hong changed location several times after fires, and became less important after the First Opium War (18391842), as Guangzhou lost its monopoly of foreign trade and Hong Kong was ceded to the British as a colony.

Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, the name ''hong'' designated major business houses. One of the earliest foreign hongs established in Hong Kong was Jardine Matheson & Co., who bought Lot No. 1 at the first Hong Kong land sale in 1841. In 1843 the same firm established a mainland China headquarters on the Bund in Shanghai, just south of the British Consulate. The building was known as "the Ewo Hong", or "Ewo House", based on the

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...

pronunciation of the company's Chinese name (怡和行,

: ''Yiwo Hong'', now 怡和洋行). Jardines took the name from the earlier '' Ewo hong'' run by

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 w ...

near Whampoa, Canton. The term is most often used in reference to

colonial Hong Kong Hong Kong was a colony and later a dependent territory of the British Empire from 1841 to 1997, apart from a period of occupation under the Japanese Empire from 1941 to 1945 during the Pacific War. The colonial period began with the British ...

companies directly. Prior to the establishment of banking institutions other than small foreign bank branches, the three firms that financed most of Hong Kong's economic activities were Jardine's, Dent's and Russell's. Most of these firms became multinational corporations with management consisting of mostly European expatriates.Genzberger, Christine A.

994 Year 994 ( CMXCIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * September 15 – Battle of the Orontes: Fatimid forces, under Turkish gene ...

(1994) Hong Kong Business: The Portable Encyclopedia for Doing Business with Hong Kong. By the time of the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, many of the hongs had diversified their holdings and shifted their headquarters offshore away from Hong Kong to avoid potential takeover by the Chinese Communist Party.

Conglomerates of colonial Hong Kong

Note: ''Below are lists of companies that had a predominant effect on Hong Kong's economy at a particular era. Their noteworthiness is debatable. The official names of the era are used.''

1843

* 12 large British firms * Six Indian Parsee companies – including D.M. Rustomjee * One American company – Augustine Heard and Company

1844

* Jardine Matheson * Dent & Co.

1850s

* Russell & Co – US company founded by Samuel Russell in Canton in 1824 for the opium trade; acquired J & T H Perkins of Boston in 1830, established Hong Kong office 1850 * Wheelock Marden 1857

1860s

* Gilman and Bowman – established by Richard James Gilman as a tea trader in 1840; taken over by Duncan Paterson of Australia 1917 and turned into a privately held company; bought by Inchcape Group in 1969Dan Waters, "Hong Kong Hongs with Long Histories and British Connections", Paper presented at the 12th Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia, at Hong Kong University (June 1991): 230–231; http://hkjo.lib.hku.hk/archive/files/8deeba7475f950a5f3938fc24f687bbe.pdf

1870s

* Butterfield and Swire * Adamson Bell and Company; transformed into Dodwell, Carlill & Co. in 1891 by George Benjamin Dodwell; changed name to Dodwell & Co. in 1899; bought by Inchcape Group in 1972 *

The Wharf (Holdings) The Wharf (Holdings) Limited (), or Wharf (九倉) in short, is a company founded in 1886 in Hong Kong. As its name suggests, the company's original business was in running wharfage and dockside warehousing, and it was originally known as Th ...

1890s

* Jebsen & Co.

References

External links

Profit Proffs in ChinaProfitOnline Recenze
{{Hong Kong topics Economic history of China China–United States economic relations History of Hong Kong History of foreign trade in China Economy of Hong Kong