Russell & Co.

Why Shanghai knows the name

Russell & Co. (旗昌洋行, Qíchāng Yángháng) was the largest American trading house in China, and in Shanghai it is remembered for its steamers. Its Shanghai Steam Navigation Co. dominated the Yangtze in the 1860s and 1870s with seventeen ships. In January 1877 the American partners sold the fleet and their Bund property to the Chinese-run China Merchants Steam Navigation Company for about two million taels. The firm dissolved in 1891, but the land survives under another name: the China Merchants head office at No. 9 the Bund stands on the old Russell garden.

When did Russell reach Shanghai?

Wikipedia states that Russell & Co. was the first firm established in Shanghai. The record does not bear that out. Jardine Matheson and Dent & Co. are both recorded opening in 1843, and a University of Zurich chronology based on Sibing He’s study of the firm dates a Russell branch to 1846 and the move of its main headquarters from Canton to Shanghai to 1852. Wikipedia agrees on the 1852 headquarters. So the American house came to Shanghai a few years after the British ones, then became the base of its China operation.

The firm itself was older. Samuel Russell and Phillip Ammidon formed it at Canton in 1824, and by 1842 it was the largest American trading house in China. Its partners included Warren Delano, who joined in 1833 and whose grandson was Franklin Roosevelt, and members of the Forbes family, who led the firm from 1830 to its dissolution according to a Hong Kong history. Wikipedia’s article on hongs describes it as founded for the opium trade; the firm’s own partners’ papers would be needed to say more.

Who built the steamer line?

The key figure is Edward Cunningham (金能亨, Jīn Néngxīng, 1823–1889). The Shanghai gazetteer’s biography says he was a Russell partner who held the post of acting American consul from 1852 and was elected one of the first directors of the Municipal Council in 1854. Around 1859 he proposed opening Yangtze river shipping to the head office, which did not take it up. In 1861 he put his own steamer on the river and did well; in 1862 he raised a capital of one million taels from Chinese and foreign backers to found the first specialist steamship company in modern Shanghai. The company’s name in English was the Shanghai Steam Navigation Co.; in Chinese, 旗昌轮船公司. He later founded the Yangtze Insurance Association, described as the first insurance company headquartered in Shanghai, and chaired the Council in 1868–1869.

A Briton, Nichol Latimer, publisher of the North China Herald, managed the line until his death in 1865.

How large was the fleet?

Wikipedia says the company started with five steamships and had eighteen in the 1870s. A Hong Kong history says that in 1874 it ran seventeen on the Yangtze, the largest fleet at Shanghai, while China Merchants, Jardines and Butterfield & Swire each had six. The gazetteer puts Russell in a trio with Jardines and China Merchants as the three big Yangtze shipowners. Seward, the American consul-general at Peking, wrote of “the eighteen or twenty ships of the former American line” when the sale was agreed. The count therefore ranges from seventeen to twenty depending on who counts and when.

Who was China Merchants, and why did it buy?

The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company (轮船招商局, Lúnchuán Zhāoshāngjú) was founded in Shanghai on 16 December 1872 under Li Hongzhang (李鸿章, Lǐ Hóngzhāng). Its general manager from 1873 to 1884 was Tong King-sing (唐廷枢), who had been Jardines’ comprador at Shanghai; Xu Run (徐润), who had trained at Dent & Co., later became a senior manager there. In other words, the buyer was run by men whom the foreign firms had themselves trained.

The American side explained the sale in terms of money. A Hong Kong history says the Americans decided that profits were too low to justify the competitive effort. The terms in Seward’s despatch of 30 January 1877 show what they got: two million taels, half before 31 March and the rest in quarterly instalments of 50,000 taels at 8 per cent interest. The company had 22,500 shares of 100 taels each, trading at 60 to 66 taels, and the offer worked out at about 103 taels a share, nearly 56 per cent above market. Seward concluded that the American company “disappears from the waters of China” and that the American flag lost a prominence it would not regain there.

What did the sale change?

The California finding aid for the line’s photograph album puts it plainly: after 1877 the American share of Chinese shipping dropped sharply. In 1874 the Russell fleet of seventeen was nearly three times the size of any rival’s six, and three years later it belonged to a Chinese-managed competitor. The sale also moved a block of Bund land from American to Chinese hands, which is why the China Merchants building stands where it does. Compare the capital: the line was founded in 1862 with one million taels, and was sold fifteen years later for twice that, a doubling that holders of shares trading at 60 to 66 taels can hardly have regretted.

Cunningham’s own career gives a human scale to those numbers. Born in 1823, he served as acting US consul in 1852, became one of the first directors of the Municipal Council in 1854, and chaired it in 1868–1869. The gazetteer records that he argued for keeping the Bund wide and open as a public road with a view of the river, which is part of why the Bund looks as it does. He died in 1889, two years before the firm he served was dissolved.

What the sources disagree on

• Price. Seward’s despatch says two million taels. A 1961 Japanese study abstract (Kitamura Hironao) says 2,200,000 Shanghai taels, and the Shanghai place entry for the China Merchants building gives 2.22 million. The difference may reflect later adjustments or what is counted (fleet alone, or fleet plus property); none of the sources I read explains it.
• First in Shanghai. Wikipedia says first; other records put Jardine and Dent in 1843.
• Date of the Bund purchase. Wikipedia and the archive page say 1877; one Shanghai local article cited elsewhere says 1891.
• Fleet size. Seventeen, eighteen or twenty, depending on source and year.

Who were Russell’s compradors?

I did not find a named Russell comprador in the sources I could reach. The Hong Kong history I used does not discuss compradors, and the gazetteer’s biography of Cunningham is silent on the point. Any long treatment of the comprador system should look for them in Russell’s own papers and in Hao Yen-p’ing’s study.

What happened after 1949?

Nothing in the firm’s own terms: it dissolved in 1891, becoming Shewan & Company. The land is the story that continued: China Merchants bought the Bund properties in 1877, and, as the place entry for the building records, its head office of 1901 at No. 9 stands on the old Russell garden.

What to look for

Stand across the Bund at No. 9, the China Merchants building. Behind its 1901 façade lay what was once a garden and a dock-side compound of the largest American house in Asia. The sale of 1877 is the reason the building exists. The steamers themselves are gone; the Online Archive of California holds a photograph album of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Co. dating to the 1860s and 1870s.