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the Walsh and Hall Company in Kobe Foreign Settlement in 1872.

The Walsh brothers, Thomas Walsh (1827 - 1900), John Greer Walsh, (1829 - 1897), Richard James Walsh (1831 - 1881), and Robert George Walsh (1841 - 1886), were the American merchants in Asia. After Tokugawa shogunate Japan opend up the port to the foreign trade, the brothers established the Walsh and Company (lator Walsh, Hall and Company) in Nagasaki, which became the first and most successful American company during the Last days of the shogunate and Meiji Restoration . They also introduced Western engineers and intellectuals to Japan under the Meiji Emperor.

Early period[edit]

They were born into a respectable immigrant family from Ireland, in Yonkers in the state of New York. The brothers went into business in Shanghai under the Qing Dynasty. [1]

In Japan (1855 - 1897)[edit]

Around 1855, the brothers moved to Nagasaki, Japan, to run a trading business after the Japanese government established the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement in 1854.

In 1859, the brothers and George Rogers Hall, a graduate doctor of Harvard Medical School, [2] established Walsh, Hall and Company in Yokohama when the port of Yokohama opened to foreign ships under the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, and the company began trading in gold, silk, tea and camphor at the Yokohama Trading Post. [a] In the same year, John was appointed to the US Consulate in Nagasaki by the Consulate General Townsend Harris. [3], and served until 1865.

After the Meiji Restoration and Boshin War, the company established the Kobe Trading Post in the Kobe foreign settlement and the brothers also moved again to Kobe around 1871. [b]

In 1875, two younger brothers went back to the US to learn the paper industry, and the following year, together with former British minister and advisor Rutherford Alcock, Thomas and John established the Kobe Paper Mill, using the machines made in America.

But the company prospered by selling arms and warships to the Japanese government, while the government was in the process of building its modernised army, signing the First Geneva Convention and opening the first Japanese Red Cross hospital.

After First Sino-Japanese War, John's sudden death in 1897 shocked Thomas and the family. [c] They sold the company to the former Japanese president of the Mitsubishi group, Hisaya Iwasaki [ja], and then moved to Swiss.

The building of the company in Kobe lator sold to the British bank The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

Family[edit]

Like other traders, John married a Japanese woman, Rin Yamaguchi around 1862, then he had a daughter Aiko. [3]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ The port of Yokohama was unofficially opened to foreign trade in 1858.
  2. ^ In the year, the company was sued in Yokohama by Japanese investor Hachibei Ito [ja], the step-father of Eiichi Shibusawa, for window dressing, and the Yokohama consular court dismissed the case.
  3. ^ The cause of his death was yet not known.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Tetsuo Kamiki, Masahiro Sakiyama 1993.
  2. ^ Yuki Allyson Honjo 2013.
  3. ^ a b Ennals 2013.

Further reading[edit]

  • Ennals, Peter (2013). Opening a Window to the West: The Foreign Concession at Kobe, Japan, 1868-1899. University of Toronto Press. p. 216. ISBN 9781442664227.
  • Tetsuo Kamiki, Masahiro Sakiyama (1993). Kobe kyoryuchi no 3/4 seiki: High-collared na machi no ruhtsu (The three quarters of a century of Kobe foreign settlement: the roots of fashionable city). Kobe Shimbun Shuppan Sogo Center. ISBN 4-87521-476-6.
  • Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan. Visiting Historic Buildings in The former Nagasaki foreign settlement.
  • Toshikazu Taniguchi (1986). Shitotachi yo nemure: Kobe gaikokujin bochi monogatari (Apostles rest in peace: The stories of Kobe foreign cemetary). Kobe Shimbun Sogo Shuppan Center. ISBN 4-87521-447-2.
  • Yuki Allyson Honjo (2013). Japan's Early Experience of Contract Management in the Treaty Ports. Routledge. ISBN 9781134279814.
  • Nojigiku Bunko, ed. (1967). Hyogoken jinbutu jiten 2/3 (The biographical dictionary of Hyogo prefecture). Nojigiku Bunko.
  • Mitsubishi Group (2004). "Mitsubishi jinbutsuden: Walsh brothers(Mitsubishi biographical note: Walsh brothers)". Monthly Mitsubishi (2004.10). Mitsubishi Public Relations Committee.
  • Burke-Gaffney, Brian (2003). Starcrossed: A Biography of Madame Butterfly. Norwalk, Connecticut: EastBridge. ISBN 978-1-891936-47-0; OCLC 261376334
  • Spence, Alan (2006). The Pure Land. Edinburgh: Canongate Books. ISBN 978-1-84195-855-2; OCLC 225266369
  • Gardiner, Michael (2007). At the Edge of Empire: The Life of Thomas B. Glover. Edinburgh: Birlinn. ISBN 978-1-84158-544-4; OCLC 137313475
  • Jonathan Goldstein (1998). The Jews of China M.E. Sharpe.

See also[edit]

Members of the company
Others

External links[edit]



Category:19th-century American merchants Category:American expatriates in Japan Category:People of Meiji-period Japan Category:People in Kyushu Category:19th-century American businesspeople Category:American_people_of_Irish_descent Category:People_from_Yonkers,_New_York Category:American_diplomats Category:American businesspeople

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