Chapter 3.2: British Agency Houses Flashcards
What did the British set up in Singapore?
Agency houses
What are ‘agency houses’?
Companies that helped British manufacturers sell their goods to other traders in Singapore.
What did the British agency houses earn when they helped the British manufacturers sell their goods to other traders?
A commission for their services.
Define ‘commission’.
A fee paid to an agent for performing a service which is paid in the form of a percentage of the money received from the sale of the goods.
Define ‘merchant’.
A person or company involved in wholesale trade, especially one dealing with foreign countries or supplying merchandise to a particular trade.
Give examples of the types of goods that the British Agency Houses helped to sell.
cloth, clocks, knives, nails, etc.
What else did the agency houses do?
They would export goods brought by traders from China India and the Malay Archipelago to Britain and other parts of Europe.
List some of the British agency houses found in Singapore.
Boustead & Company
Guthrie & Company
A.L. Johnston & Company
Paterson, Simons & Co.
Why did the British agency houses have difficulty trading with Asian traders?
Because the traders could not understand each other’s language.
Who did the British agency houses need to help them trade with the Asian traders?
Middlemen, i.e. people who could speak English, Malay and Chinese dialects well enough to communicate with their clients. this role was readily filled by the Chinese Peranakans.
