Number of words: 346

Jamsetji took up a job immediately after graduating, but Nusserwanji, wanting his son to gain international exposure, sent him to the British colony of Hong Kong, where he launched a company called Jamsetji and Ardeshir with three partners—Nusserwanji and two merchants, Kaliandas and Premchand Raichand. The Tatas, through this partnership, decided to deal in cotton and opium.

Nusserwanji’s brother-in-law, Dadabhoy Tata, also traded in opium and had an office in Hong Kong. He had a son, Ratanji, who was seventeen years older than Jamsetji. When the local government in Hong Kong tried to ban the opium trade, Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata, RD for short, along with another businessman in the same trade, David Sassoon, petitioned the British government to intervene. In those days, trading in opium did not raise eyebrows the way it does in today’s world. It had medicinal uses and had been used extensively in the Crimean War (1853–56). It was considered legitimate business everywhere but China, where it was considered a social evil.

The ruling Qing Emperor had banned the trade of opium in China, though poppy—the plant from which opium is extracted—had been grown in China since the seventh century. The habit of mixing opium with tobacco, spread by the Europeans, had led to large-scale addiction, hence the imperial ban on trading in opium.

British traders, not wanting to let go of their profits from opium, found a way out. They asked Chinese traders to sell them opium in Calcutta (the British victory in the Battle of Plassey in 1757 had given the East India Company control of the Bengal Province). On paper, the exchange could be shown as opium being received by British traders as payment for tea they sold to their Chinese counterparts. Once they received the opium, the British traders pushed it back into China through smuggling routes. The Industrial Revolution in Britain and the country’s rapid growth thereafter were fuelled quite a bit by this opium trade.

Excerpted from Pg 9-10 of Tatas: How a family built a business and a nation by Girish Kuber