HSBC was chartered in Hong Kong in 1865 to finance the trade between Europe and Asia — and the single most valuable commodity in that trade was opium. In December 2012 the same bank paid $1.9 billion to US authorities after admitting it had moved at least $881 million in drug-cartel money. This is the story of the century and a half in between, and of how the most respectable address in banking got its start. Britain had a problem: it wanted Chinese tea, and China wanted almost nothing Britain made. Silver drained east by the ton. The East India Company's answer was to grow opium under monopoly in Bengal, auction it in Calcutta to private "country traders", and look away — a system of deliberate deniability that let the Company keep its hands clean while the drug moved. By 1831 roughly 20,000 chests a year were reaching China, about 140 pounds each. The men who carried it built fortunes that are still standing. Jardine Matheson, founded 1 July 1832, became the dominant opium house; James Matheson wrote of the "very godly people" who objected to the drug trade. William Jardine lobbied Lord Palmerston for war, and Palmerston publicly credited his "assistance". In the spring of 1839 the Qing commissioner Lin Zexu destroyed around 1,400 tons of confiscated opium. The war that followed ended with the Treaty of Nanking — and Hong Kong. Twenty-three years later, on 3 March 1865, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation opened with HK$5 million in capital, founded to bank the trade that the war had secured. Its first manager, Thomas Sutherland, wanted it run on "sound Scottish banking principles." WHAT THIS VIDEO DOES NOT CLAIM This is a documented history, not a conspiracy theory, and the video says so on screen: • The claim that "Jardine founded HSBC" is unproven. HSBC financed the trade; the merchant houses sold the drug. • There is no documented figure for what percentage of HSBC's founding capital came from opium. • The 2012 settlement is a rhyme with the bank's origins, not a proven continuous throughline. No HSBC executive was criminally charged; it was a corporate deferred-prosecution agreement. SOURCES HSBC's own corporate history · Britannica (Opium Wars, Treaty of Nanking) · the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report on HSBC (2012) · The Globe and Mail · The Jewish Chronicle (2022) · contemporary accounts of the Canton trade. All research is original and sourced.