FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY

The small but thriving community of Parsis in Canton was integral to the China trade, brokering deals and serving as agents and translators. Parsis, Zoroasterians from Persia who had settled in India by the 14th century, were involved early on in the British "country trade" from India. By the early 19th century a group was well-established in Canton; by the 1820s there was a Parsi cemetery at Macao. In the 1830s the best-known Parsi merchant, Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, had "...dealings with Jardine, Matheson...worth well over a million pounds a year," according to P. Conner, The Hongs of Canton, pp. 118-19, where the author details the Parsi presence on the China coast and illustrates the Lamqua full-length oil portrait of Jeejeebhoy.