ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explains the licensed comprador system during the Canton trade period and its collapse due to the First Opium War, leading to the privatisation of the comprador system. It provides a narrative of the formulation of the durable system of intermediation in nineteenth-century Hong Kong. It clarifies the inception of the intermediate business system in Hong Kong and provides a valuable case study on the compradors in terms of the historiography of modern China for comparative purposes. The comprador system was different in each port city, and continued evolving through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book also examines the emergence of the company compradors alongside the decline of the government compradors. It further explores the company compradors' businesses, which underpinned the economic development of Hong Kong as a commercial centre in East and South East Asia.
