1oo years ago in 1920 my great grandfather George Coward visited Beijing just after the Spanish flu outbreak
And here are my photos in the exact same spot 100 years later in 2020 at the start of the outbreak of COVID 19
It’s amazing that there are basically no changes in the photos in 100 years.
But the global economic and cultural environment couldn’t be much more different.
He was visiting Japan for trade where he used to buy silk and sell in London His company “Coward and Moore” At the time Japan was the leader in Silk trade.
Japanese raw silk exports exceeded the Chinese, and in 1920, Japanese raw silk exports tripled those of China, gaining a dominant 80%share in the global market. source.
He visited Tianjin and Beijing – he traveled all over the world – his passport is fascinating and has many major ports at the time.
Silk inspection for export at the Silk Conditioning House, Yokohama, c. 1920.
After the 1929 crisis the whole market changed and the trade was no longer profitable.
After the crisis in 1929 my grandfather and his brother were taken out of school and James Coward went to work in France, and my Grandfather left City of London school at 15 and went to work in sales in London in the fur trade.
By the 1890s to the 1930s, Japanese silk exports had quadrupled making Japan at that time the largest silk exporter in the world; mostly due to the economic reforms during the Meiji restoration and the decline of the Qing dynasty, which led to rapid industrialization of Japan whilst the Chinese industries stagnated.[4]
During World War II, embargoes against Japan had led to adoption of synthetic materials such as Nylon,[5] which led to the decline of the Japanese silk industry and its position as the lead silk exporter of the world. However, the state of the Japanese economy after the Second World War along with the introduction of synthetics and nylon and cheaper imports from China made the Japanese silk industry almost obsolete. Today, China exports the largest volume of raw silk in the world due to its economic reforms in the 1980s.
I think it is really important to study and understand history because there are many lessons to be learnt and history often repeats itself.
Here is an interview with James Coward who is my grandpas brother where he talks about his early life.
He was one of the last remaining Battle of Britain World War 2 fighter pilots still alive in Australia. (There are 7 hours of interviews in the Australian War Archives – as he had quite an interesting life having been shot down as a fighter pilot in the second world war and working in the personal staff of Winston Churchill – at some point I should try to condense that interview into a shorter video and restructure it because 7 hours is too long! But it is great that someone has gone to the effort to interview him.)
