IT was in this week of 1784 that William Jardine, co-founder of one of the world’s largest companies, Jardine Matheson, was born near Lochmaben in Dumfriesshire – and in was in this week in 1843 that he died in London.

Born on February 24, 1784, Jardine was one of seven children of a farmer, Andrew, who died when William was just nine. His older brother David ensured that William continued to be educated and he entered Edinburgh University’s Medical School at the of 16. He graduated in 1802, having gained a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He soon joined the East India Company, which was then at the height of its power and had a private army of some 250,000 soldiers in India.

It was on board one of those vessels, the Brunswick, that Dr Jardine started his career as a ship’s surgeon and spotted an opportunity early in his service. The company allowed its employees to trade on their own account and Jardine was soon using his allocated cargo space to deal in such commodities as musk for perfume, cassia and Chinese cinnamon, which was prized for its health benefits.

Apart from a dangerous incident in 1805 – in which the French naval vessel Marengo captured the Brunswick which then ran aground and was destroyed on the South African coast – Jardine appears to have led a charmed life, transferring to the Company ship Glatton, having met its surgeon, Thomas Weeding, and making the friendship of the Glatton’s purser Henry Wright. Both men would play a part in Jardine’s future career, as did opium trader Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy who was based in Bombay, now Mumbai.

Jardine did so well out of his trading that in 1817 he decided to give up his medical career and become an independent trader. Commerce suited Jardine, who did so well that he was able to establish himself at Canton in China in 1820 in partnership with Weeding.

His main business was trading in opium. The East India Company was prohibited from trading in opium between its cultivation areas in India and the main market, the coastal cities of China, but smaller companies had no such restrictions.

The Chinese government, the Qing dynasty, wanted to ban all trade in opium but the demand remained colossal, so the doctor from Dumfriesshire set himself to becoming wealthy through the trade. Jardine once said: “Opium is the safest and most gentleman-like speculation I am aware of.”

He became a partner in the firm of Magniac and Co, a huge trading company based in Canton, and by 1825 he had turned the ailing firm around. Two years later his fellow Scot, James Matheson, joined the firm and by 1828 it was clear that the two men had effectively taken charge.

Jardine and Matheson were quite dissimilar. The former was tall and lean and conducted himself in a grave almost imperious manner, while Matheson was shorter, more stout, and a liberal convivial soul who enjoyed art. Jardine was known for his attention to detail and his tough negotiating skill, while Matheson schmoosed his way through life. They were both hard workers, however, and were very determined to accumulate great wealth.

On a visit to Guangzhou, Jardine was hit over the head by an assailant, but he soon recovered his senses and went back to work, earning himself the nickname “iron-headed rat”.

In 1832, Jardine and Matheson set up a new company under their own names, with the former’s old friend Henry Wright as one of its partners. The company was later named Ewo, which in Cantonese means “happy harmony”.

Their harmony did indeed prove happy and, when the East India Company lost its trade monopoly in 1834, the Ewo firm was in prime position to profit. The first ship to reach England after the end of the monopoly was the Sarah, owned by Weeding, which carried a cargo of silk exported by Ewo.

Soon the firm would be exporting tea from China and India using fast clipper ships sailing under a Saltire-style flag, but opium remained its biggest earner, with the firm operating from the mid-1830s from the island of Hong Kong. So influential was he that Jardine was soon being called Taipan, a Cantonese word meaning great manager.

Jardine officially “retired” in 1839, but in fact he went back to the UK and helped cause a war – the infamous Opium Wars which many historians view as one of the darkest periods of British imperial conduct.

Desperate to expand the opium trade to China while the Chinese government was cracking down on opium imports, Jardine persuaded the foreign secretary to start military action against China. In an extraordinary move for a civilian, Jardine presented Lord Palmerston with a detailed plan for the conduct of such a war. He also strongly advocated taking control of Hong Kong as its location and anchorage were strategically vital. His approach created a new phenomenon which is still referred to today – gunboat diplomacy.

The Chinese were no match for the British Navy and soon surrendered. Among other things, the Treaty of Nanking ceded control of Hong Kong to the British and Jardine Matheson became the biggest firm in the colony. It would trade from there for decades and is now one of the largest companies in Asia with its symbol a stylised thistle.

In 1841, Jardine became the MP for Ashburton in Devon and one of his first speeches was to call for compensation for those traders who had lost large sums when the Qing dynasty seized and destroyed their opium imports.

Jardine contracted cancer but continued to work until shortly before his death on February 27, 1843, three days after his 59th birthday. He has been honoured with streets named after him in Hong Kong, and was given the singular accolade of being killed by Zhang Jie in the Assassin’s Creed video game series.