Lost Opportunities: The Case of a Chinese Merchant of Late Colonial Sydney

Abstract

This paper provides an insight into the life and times of a Chinese merchant in the Australian colonies during the second half of the nineteenth century. Having served as a non-commissioned officer in the Ever Victorious Army under Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Charles ©Chinese© Gordon during the Taiping Rebellion, Kum Tiy arrived in Sydney around 1864©1865. With a number of partners, he immediately set up the merchant business of Sun Kum Tiy & Company in Lower George Street in the Rocks, Sydney. In time, his merchant empire was expanded to include some thirteen branches in New South Wales, fifteen in Victoria, two in Queensland, nine in New Zealand and one in the Pacific Islands, including a trading vessel. He was to become one of Sydney©s and New South Wales©s wealthiest and most influential merchants of the late colonial period. The Sun Kum Tiy Australian story provides further insight into the business of Chinese merchants operating in an overseas location during the nineteenth century. It acknowledges the connections of the merchant class with clan and district/county based associations, their entrepreneurial activities, their philanthropic activities, their leadership in the local Chinese diaspora and their standing within the wider European community. The paper concludes with a consideration of the motives that led Kum Tiy to abandon his financial and social successes in New South Wales during the late 1880s and early 1890s and return to China, which, on all accounts, represented opportunities lost, both for him and his would-be adopted country of twenty-five years.