Michael Grubb and the 1750S and 1760S

Michael Grubb and the 1750s and 1760s

In August 1763, a romance came to a head in the warm Macao summer. The young trader Michael Grubb had left for Canton, while his friend Jean Abraham Grill stayed behind. In his absence, Grill went to see Grubb’s lover Isabel Jackson, and they kissed. Isabel promptly told Grubb about it. He, in turn, wrote to Grill: ‘The kiss you received my brother, I imagine, was not the only one, and once you have called a few more times I suppose you will be just as used to them as I am. I do wonder that they were given in my absence, because she assured me that she did not want to give you any’. Grubb criticised Grill’s behaviour ‘towards the person you know I prize highly’ and said: ‘In my presence you have never dared ask her for a single kiss, but I had barely turned my back on Macao before you forcibly take many from her’. In the margin Grubb scribbled that Grill’s ‘violent liberty against a person I love and that in my absence, has made me forget the friendship I felt for you’. Grill wrote a long letter in reply the same night, saying this moved him even more strongly than the news of his father’s death and pleading for for- giveness, ‘or I am for all my days an unhappy man, and who knows how long those days can last after such a blow’.1

In 1750, the young Michael Grubb arrived in Canton on the Swedish East India- man Adolph Fredrich, and with him it is possible to explore the next era in the life of Swedish employees in Canton. Grubb (1728–1808) was born into a Stockholm merchant family. When his father died, he had to make a living for himself. He made use of his family connections to the Swedish East India Company and managed to secure a position on a ship. By the end of the 1750s, after several trips, he became one of the first Swedes to stay in Canton for more than one year. In short, Grubb was typical for the Swedish company employees at this time in terms of family connections, nationality and birthplace. To venture out on a company ship was a natu- ral choice for a young man in his position: he had little capital but excellent contacts through his family in Stockholm and Turku.2

1 ‘Letter to Jean Abraham Grill from Michael Grubb 13/8 1763’, IS, GA, nma; ‘Letter from Jean Abraham Grill to Michael Grubb 17–18/8 1763’, UB, GA, nma. 2 The main sources for Grubb’s time in Canton are the letters in Godegårdsarkivet. For his life in Sweden, see August Nachmanson and David Hannerberg, Garphyttan: ett gammalt bruks historia (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1945).

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The new, everyday life in Canton stemmed from a slightly changed context within the Swedish company. A new charter had been issued in May 1746, and the same board of directors who led the first charter was entrusted with the second. However, in contrast to the situation during Colin Campbell’s time, it was by now possible to recruit able men in Sweden. Additionally, there were controversies between the Swedish and the British East India companies over the number of British people on board the Swedish ships. As a result, the number of foreign officers decreased and there were far fewer Scots on board (albeit plenty on the board of directors – among them Campbell).3 Grubb set out on one of the first ships in the second charter. Its destination was typical as out of twenty-six company ships in this charter, all but one sailed for Canton. Having arrived in Canton, Grubb gradually built up a business network. His correspondence shows how he cooperated daily with people from multiple groups: people from Canton and Macao, Protestants as well as Catholics, and varying groups such as the Armenians, the British and the Dutch. When the Dutch supercargoes bid against Grubb in 1763, they noted, ‘It is said that Grubb has received a large part of this money from the most prominent merchants at Macao’.4 Grubb worked as a broker for the Armenians in Macao, imported European commodities on ships bound for China and participated in the intra- Asian junk trade with South Asia, Java, the Philippines and Japan.5 And he did well. Another Swede wrote back home in 1761 saying, ‘Young Grubb has made a great fortune in a short time by venturing considerable cargoes in Jonks to Manilla & Japan’.6 During this period the remittance trade in Asia took off, and for a time Grubb reaped the profits from this development. Grubb’s trade prac- tices demonstrate the growth of private trade and its multinational structure. However, they are also part of something bigger: connections such as these gradually tied the eighteenth-century world together – they formed part of the early modern globalisation process. In 1764, the company established a permanent capital fund in Canton, with which the supercargoes purchased cheap goods during the off-season. The fund borrowed money from the local market to circumvent the dependency on pre- carious silver transports. That required suitable commercial contacts, networks and credit links, all of which Grubb had.7 That he was a well-established actor

3 Koninckx, The Swedish East India Company, 78–80, 315, 335–336. 4 Van Dyke and Viallé, The Canton–Macao Dagregisters, 1763, 68. 5 Van Dyke and Viallé, The Canton–Macao Dagregisters, 1762, 6–8, 117; Van Dyke and Viallé, The Canton–Macao Dagregisters, 1763, 127; see also Kjellberg, Svenska ostindiska compagnierna, 111. 6 Quoted in Leos Müller, ““Merchants” and “Gentlemen” in Early-Modern Sweden. The World of Jean Abraham Grill, 1736–1792’, in The Self-Perception of Early Modern Capitalists, ed. Mar- garet C. Jacob and Catherine Secretan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 135. 7 Müller, ‘The Swedish East India Company’, 98.