Russell & Company


Russell & Company was the largest American trading house of the mid-19th century in China.

Foundation

arrived in China, from Connecticut, in 1819, and subsequently, in 1824, founded Russell & Company in Canton to trade opium, silk, and tea.

Expansion

In 1830, the company was merged with Thomas Handasyd Perkins' J & T H Perkins of Boston, established in Canton in 1806 by John Perkins Cushing, Perkins' nephew, and was then led by another two nephews, brothers Robert Bennet Forbes and John Murray Forbes.
Their illegal trade at that time in Turkish opium via the island of Lintin in the Pearl River estuary was particularly lucrative.
Russell withdrew from the company in 1836 and returned to the United States. The firm attracted numerous influential partners through the 1830s and 40s, particularly Bostonians. By 1842, it had become the largest American trading house in China and maintained that position for decades.
Briton Nichol Latimer, resident of Shanghai and the publisher of the North China Herald, the most influential British newspaper in China, was the manager of Russell & Company’s Shanghai Steam Navigation Co. until his death in 1865.
Facing financial difficulties, the company devolved into Shewan & Company in 1891.

Notable people of Russell & Company

Partners