Noble House (1981)

Noble House is a novel by James Clavell, published in 1981 and set in Hong Kong in 1963. It is the fourth book published in Clavell's Asian Saga and is chronologically the fifth book in the series. The "Noble House" in the title is the nickname of Struan's, the trading company first introduced in Clavell's Tai-Pan.

The novel is over a thousand pages long, and contains dozens of characters and numerous intermingling plot lines. While primarily a sequel to Tai-Pan, the book also references characters and events from King Rat and Shogun, thereby retroactively establishing that all of Clavell's novels take place in a shared fictional universe. In 1988, it was adapted as a television miniseries for NBC, starring Pierce Brosnan. The miniseries updates the storyline of the novel to the 1980s.

Plot summary

Noble House is set in 1963 and serves as a sequel to Clavell's novel Tai-Pan. Ian Dunross, the 10th tai-pan of Struan's and a descendant of founder Dirk Struan, struggles to rescue the company from the precarious financial position left by his predecessor. To this end, he seeks partnership with American millionaire Lincoln Bartlett, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan Gornt, who seeks to destroy Struan's once and for all. Meanwhile, Chinese communists, Taiwanese nationalists, and Soviet spies illegally vie for influence in Hong Kong while the British government seeks to prevent their actions. Anyone seeking to stop them cannot do so without enlisting the aid of Hong Kong's criminal underworld. Other obstacles include water shortages, landslides, bank runs and stock market crashes.

In Noble House, Dunross finds his company the target of a hostile takeover at a time when Struan's is desperately overextended. He is also embroiled in international espionage when he finds himself in possession of secret documents desperately desired by both the KGB and MI6. The novel follows Dunross' attempts to extricate himself from all this and to save Struan's, the Noble House.

Dunross also inherited the "coin debt" obligation first introduced in Tai-Pan. As tai-pan of Struan's, he must fulfill the request, whether legal or illegal, to anyone who presents one of the half coins that were initially split by Dirk Struan and the trader Jin Qua, serving as repayment for the latter's loan of silver. The first half coin was redeemed during the events in the previous novel, and the second coin between the events of Tai-Pan and Noble House. Noble House follows the fate of the third half coin (an illustration of the coin is prominently featured on the cover of several editions of the novel).

Background

Struan and Company is based on Jardine Matheson & Company, which continues to exist as an Asian trading company. The chief character, Ian Dunross, is believed to be a composite character of two real life Jardine Matheson tai-pans, Sir Hugh Barton and Sir Michael Herries.

Rothwell-Gornt is based on Butterfield and Swire, now known as Swire Pacific. Quillan Gornt is based on two Swire tai-pans, John Kidston "Jock" Swire and William Charles Goddard Knowles.

Unlike the other Asian Saga novels, Noble House is not closely based on a specific series of events, but is more a snapshot of the 1960s in Hong Kong, serving as a capsule history of Jardine Matheson against the backdrop of the impending Vietnam War and the recent Kim Philby defection. Though the prologue is set on June 8, 1960 against the backdrop of the real Typhoon Mary, the story opens on Sunday, August 18, 1963, and runs through the days immediately preceding the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy.

In 1961, Jardine Matheson became a public company, with the initial offer oversubscribed over 56 times, which is attributed in the novel to tai-pan Ian Dunross. In 1963, the Hongkong Land (fictionalized as Asian Properties) subsidiary of Jardine Matheson opened the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which has today become one of the world's leading hotels. The Dairy Farm subsidiary of Jardine Matheson moved into the supermarket sector in 1964 with the acquisition of Wellcome (fictionalized as Hong Kong General Stores).

A Jardine Matheson representative office was established in Australia in 1963 (fictionalized as the next assignment of Linbar Struan). The Ho Pak bank run storyline mirrored the real Hang Seng Bank run in 1965. The two primary banks, Victoria Bank and Blacs, were the fictionalized HSBC and Standard Chartered, respectively. The big set-pieces—the fire on the boat and the landslide—were closely modeled on real events (the Jumbo Floating Restaurant fire in 1971 and the Kotewall Road disaster in 1972).

The Macau businessman who controlled the gold trade in partnership with Struans, Lando Mata, is based on a composite of two famous Macau businessmen, Pedro José Lobo and Stanley Ho. The Noble House compradore family, the Chens, are based on the Hotung family. The American-Chinese scientist who defected to China and helped develop the first atom bomb for China, Dr. Joseph Yu, is a fictionalized version of renowned Caltech scientist Dr. Qian Xuesen. Sir Dunstan Barre is based on Sir Douglas Clague while the character Tsu-yan is based on Hong Kong businessman Henry Fok.

A major difference between the original novel and the television miniseries adaptation is that the television version changes the setting from 1963 to the late 1980s, and updates visible technology and the general atmosphere accordingly. The looming return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 is frequently mentioned in the miniseries, which was not a major concern in the 1960s.