When it comes to "the world's richest man", many people feel that this should have nothing to do with China. In the minds of many people, the "richest man in the world" has always belonged to Americans. The person who has long been the "richest man in the world" in the 21st century is Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corporation in the United States. Today's "richest man in the world" is Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
In fact, there is also a person in China who has been topped the "world's richest man", his name is Wu Bingjian.
Wu Bingjian was a Qing Dynasty native, so it has a hundred-year history until now. Wu Bingjian was born in 1769 and died in 1843. In 2001, the Wall Street Journal in the United States also counted 50 of the world's richest people in 1,000 years. Among them, there are 6 Chinese on the list, and Wu Bingjian is one of them.
According to public data, by the time of Daoguang's fourteenth year (1834), Wu Bingjian's private assets had reached 26 million silver dollars. Before 186 years, Wu Bingjian's wealth was already worth tens of millions of silver dollars, and if it is placed in the present, it is also a lot of wealth.
Wu Bingjian is the most well-known Chinese in American history, and even Marx has mentioned his name in a monograph. At that time, no second Chinese could do such treatment.
However, although Wu Bingjian is said to be rich and invincible, he was once ranked "the richest man in the world". However, his name is little known in China. Even, Wu Bingjian's ending is very tragic...
Wu Bingjian was born in Guangzhou, with his ancestral home in Fujian. And Wu Bingjian's road to wealth creation really gathers the right people at all times and places. Wu Bingjian's ancestors were once engaged in the tea business in Fujian, and after the early years of the Kangxi Dynasty, they moved from Quanzhou, Fujian to Guangzhou, Guangdong. The ancestral business continued to pass down until the fifth generation, and it was transferred to Wu Bingjian's father, Wu Guoying.
In 1783, Wu Guoying began to do business as a trading house. In 1792, Wu Guoying handed over the family business to her son Wu Bingjun, who founded Jardine Matheson. However, Wu Bingjun died of illness at the age of 35. He handed over Jardine Matheson to his younger brother Wu Bingjian in 1801. Since then, Jardine Matheson has begun to grow bigger and stronger in wu Bingjian's hands.
In the late 17th century, the Kangxi Emperor relaxed the policy of sea ban, and more and more merchants came to China to trade. After that, the local government of Guangdong began to recruit powerful traders and designated them to engage in the business of foreign ships. Since then, the "Guangdong Thirteen Elements" was born.
In the later period, the "Guangdong Thirteen Lines" were not designated 13, and sometimes there were as many as dozens. Wu Bingjian's Jardine Hope Company later became the leader of the "Thirteen Elements". In that period of great business transactions in the world, these merchants naturally became rich.
At the time, these Chinese merchants were recognized by the Western world as "the richest people in the world in the 18th century." Wu Bingjian is a business wizard, and when he runs "Jardine Matheson", he does not forget to establish relationships with important customers in Europe and the United States. Therefore, his trading house was always able to find a source of influence among the East India Company, the scattered merchants, and the American merchants.
In addition to doing business as a merchant, involving silk fabrics, tea, porcelain, etc., he also owned a large number of tea gardens, shops, fields, houses, etc. like ordinary Chinese landlords. In addition, he also did business in foreign countries, investing in securities, railroads, etc. in the United States. It can be said that at that time, "Jardine Matheson" was a world-class multinational consortium. In this way, how can Wu Bingjian not be rich?
However, in ancient times, there was a rank of "scholars, farmers, industrialists and merchants", and even if Wu Bingjian was rich, his status was still relatively humble. In the face of officials, even rich businessmen are inferior.
Later, because the Qing Dynasty government realized the "merchant guarantee system". If a foreigner wants to do business with Chinese. Then there must be a Chinese as a "guarantee". Therefore, Wu Bingjian became the "guarantor" of the East India Company. At that time, the East India Company was smuggling opium to China, which the Qing government could not control, and Wu Bingjian was angry in the middle.
Therefore, in many film and television dramas, Wu Bingjian is a negative character. In the eyes of the common people, Wu Bingjian was a "traitor" and "traitor" who helped foreigners smuggle opium. However, in the eyes of foreigners, he was a partner in the tea trade and was not qualified to smuggle opium himself.
At that time, Lin Zexu came to Guangzhou because of the disaster of opium and demanded that the British merchants hand over all the opium. To this end, Wu Bingjian took the initiative to mediate among them, hoping that British merchants would hand over opium. But what about the foreigners who can listen to him?
Wu Bingjian had no choice, he took out his own money to buy 1037 boxes of opium from the British and handed them to Lin Zexu. However, Lin Zexu believed that this was a collusion between the thirteen merchants and the British merchants to deceive the government. Lin Zexu asked minister Qincha to interrogate the Wu family and let Wu Bingjian look at him in three places.
As a Qing Dynasty businessman, Wu Bingjian knew that he could not fight the government and British businessmen. However, he had always hoped for a peaceful solution to the opium problem. After the Opium War broke out, Wu Bingjian knew that his hopes were dashed. At that time, Wu Bingjian clearly realized that if britain won, then the status of the next thirteen lines would definitely be coerced. So, he began to take the lead in contributing to the war.
He united the merchants of the thirteen lines and began to build fortresses for the war, build warships, make cannons... However, in the end, the war was lost.
In 1841, when the British army approached the city of Guangzhou, the Qing army was powerless to resist, so the merchants went to mediate. Later, the two sides signed the "Guangzhou Contract", agreeing to hand over 6 million yuan in compensation within one week. And 1/3 of this 6 million yuan is from the merchants. Among them, Wu Bingjian paid 1.1 million yuan.
During the war, Wu Bingjian donated a lot of silver to the government, and once contributed a huge fortune to the Qing government for a short period of tranquility... However, even so, Wu Bingjian did not exchange the trust of the people, and Lin Zexu repeatedly reprimanded Wu Bingjian for "shielding foreign businessmen".
Wu Bingjian once said sadly: "I would rather be a dog than the head of the business!", in such a turbulent situation, even if Wu Bingjian has more wealth, it is still impossible to exchange people's respect for himself and the peace of his family.
As a wealthy merchant in the decline of the feudal dynasty, Wu Bingjian's wealth was destined not to last long. In September 1843, Wu Bingjian died at the age of 74. This is the only publicly recorded "richest man in the world" in history. However, this "world's richest man" is somewhat miserable.
After Wu Bingjian's death, the Thirteen Lines began to decline, and the merchants went bankrupt under the pressure of the government. After the Second Opium War, a sudden fire turned the wealth of the Wu family and the generation of the Thirteen Elements into ashes... At that time, businessmen could not buy respect when they had money, and they could not exchange donations for innocence. Half of Wu Bingjian's life was spent under the misunderstanding of the world.