SCOTTISH history is full of national victories being won against long odds. But these odds have never been quite so long as at the time when two fearless Scotsmen defeated the fury and might of imperial China to force open its closed frontiers to the outside world.

More to the point, the opening was to be for goods the Scots would bring with them. They especially wanted to break down the barriers to illegal drugs that ran right round the Celestial Empire. William Jardine and James Matheson were pursuing a path that had been opened to Scots by the Union of 1707, and was, for once, really paved with gold.

From distant corners of their homeland – Jardine came from Dumfriesshire and Matheson from Sutherland – they embarked on careers in overseas trade. For that they had first to get jobs in the East India Company, headquartered in London but with a network of oriental outposts.

This professional path opened up because, after 1707, Scots entered behind the barriers of English commercial regulation.

READ MORE: Montrose makes his mark with remarkable victory

Now British subjects, they could be employed in lucrative occupations that appeared during the 18th century under the advantageous rules written from Westminster. Scots soon seized on this.

The company held a monopoly over goods shipped directly to or from the UK and the Indian sub-continent. Yet the monopoly did not apply to goods going elsewhere, in Asia, to the Americas or to other European countries. On these routes, employees of the company could trade freely. They could make themselves extremely rich, too.

After a spell of commerce from Bombay or Calcutta, they would go home with huge fortunes to buy themselves some social status, on a Highland estate or even in a parliamentary seat.

Such was the path followed by Jardine and Matheson. From India, China was steadily drawn into the system. Since the 15th century, the Chinese emperors had officially banned foreign trade.

They broadcast the view that they had created the Celestial Empire with no reason for imports from the primitive rest of the world.

Foreigners might cross the seas “bearing tribute”, as the mandarins put it. In exchange they could get some of the superior goods available for export. So the ban on trade was to Westerners like so much in the Orient, a fiction.

For example, in Europe, Asia and the Americas there were millions of customers for tea. Once Chinese consumers acquainted themselves with Indian textiles or European manufactures, they could easily afford them with the Lapsang Souchong and other varieties that they sent in the opposite direction.

It was easy enough for the imperial authorities to make a show, as they pleased, of arresting and investigating foreign merchants and captains. It was just as easy for unscrupulous foreigners to bribe the officials to keep the real relations friendlier.

In truth, the Chinese Empire was choosing a hazardous path for itself. The most lucrative commodity to be traded was opium, made from plants growing in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains. Its narcotic effects were already a scourge of India, and grew the same in China as the trade multiplied.

This was the world that opened up to Jardine and Matheson once they got to know the high seas and free exchange of the Far East.

Matheson already had several relations working out there when he arrived to launch his own career in 1812. Jardine appeared at Canton in 1820 with a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh but soon switched to commerce.

Over the next decade, Jardine, Matheson & Co, with its sharp practice and lack of financial scruple, burst apart the ramshackle regulations that the Chinese tried to impose from Canton.

Their empire in effect lost control of its own commercial system and brought free trade right into the country’s biggest port.

Futile efforts to reverse the course of events caused the First Opium War with China in 1839, won for the UK by a Scots naval commander, Lord Napier.

The clash ended with the solution of regulated – but in most important respects open –trade. The UK’s position was assured for the future by the establishment of the crown colony of Hong Kong, beyond Chinese jurisdiction.

Jardine and Matheson took up residence there and made it their corporate headquarters. The century up to the Second World War was the heyday for company and colony. Jardine, Matheson & Co no longer limited itself to trade but set up industrial and service enterprises for a wide range of products in the “treaty ports”, subject to no more than the lightest international regulation.

The National: National Extra Scottish politics newsletter banner

China continued to decay as a political entity, but the total dominance of the economy from the west made sure it ticked over enough to satisfy foreign investors. Countries other than the UK steadily obtained concessions, yet not so many as to rival British ascendancy.

The first stirring of a renewed political consciousness among the abused Chinese people made otherwise little difference at the outset.

Long wars between China and Japan, followed by the even wider Second World War, ended the old system. A completely new regime was created in the Chinese People’s Republic in 1949. Faced with its hostility, Jardine Matheson withdrew from all mainland operations in 1954.

Finally, it became an offshore multinational in 1974, still with figures from the families of the original proprietors represented on the board, often also the owners of big houses and estates in south-west Scotland. That remains so in the 21st century.