Contrary to the significance that HSBC and its comprador office made on the modernisation in China at the turn of the 19th and the 20th Century, studies about the Bank’s expansion in the Beijing-Tianjin area were exceptionally limited. In this research, the importance of HSBC’s expansion to North China in the 1880s will be primarily examined by the Bank and its comprador office’s roles in the railways development in North China. During this process, Wu Jim-pah, as the first comprador of HSBC in Tianjin, offered significant aids in establishing HSBC’s collaboration with the Qing Court and the influential Bei-yang Ministry under Li Hong-zhang’s administration. This research is going to examine Wu Jim-pah’s career and personal development in late Qing Huizhou, Suzhou, Shanghai, Tianjin and Beijing, so as to answer a series of questions related to China’s social-economic reforms and its earliest capitalists’ formation at the turn of the centuries. Moreover, acts as the first academic study focusing on Wu Jim-pah’s participation in the early modernisation projects of late Qing China, this research put the collection and classification of historical materials in the central place. The findings of primary resources from the archives in China and overseas, namely, the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica in Taipei, the National Library of China, the Shanghai Library, the Southwest Jiao-tong University, the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences (TASS), the HSBC Group Archives, London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), as well as the Public Record Office at Kew, London, could be regarded as the most valuable part of this research. / published_or_final_version / Humanities and Social Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy