ABSTRACT
John samuel swire (1825–98) arrived in Yokohama in April 1867, just before the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and just four months after establishing his first Far Eastern ‘house’ at Shanghai, under the style of Butterfield & Swire. Although he initially ‘took an unfavourable view of the place as a business centre’ 1 he was confident that he could improve upon the efforts of his Yokohama agent, the American firm of Augustine Heard & Co., and on 1 August a new branch office opened for business.
