Administering a Steam-Navigation Company in China, 1862–1867

Kwang-Ching Liu

Business History Review, 1955, vol. 29, issue 2, 157-188

Abstract: Having solved the initial problems of raising capital for its steamship venture on the Yangtze (Business History Review, June, 1954), the Boston trading firm of Russell & Co. then faced operational difficulties of a formidable nature. Fluctuating local trade, recurrent scarcity of working capital, and the presence of an outnumbering fleet of competing vessels provided a severe test of the resident-partner system of administration. Russell & Co.'s Far Eastern affiliate rode out the lean years, profited handsomely in the fat years that followed, and then liquidated its investment. This account of the Yangtze steamship venture further illuminates the methods and policies of American commission houses in the nineteenth-century China trade and has implications of interest to modern managers of foreign investments.

Date: 1955
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