In Shanghai’s bustling city centre, along the glistening Huangpu River, an Art Deco building on the historic Bund stands out with its green pyramid roof: Sassoon House. Now the Fairmont Peace Hotel was one of the first skyscrapers built in Asia, serving as “a glamorous playground for the elite where every night was an extravagant gala event and true Parisian fashion show.” According to the hotel’s website.

Local and foreign tourists photographing the beautifully illuminated building at night is reminiscent of what China calls the “Century of Humiliation”, which began after the First Opium War in 1839 and ended after the Second World War in 1945. .

The 13-storey building was completed in 1929, when most of Shanghai was occupied by colonial forces and the Sassoons, who gave their name to the House of Sassoon, were among the richest and most powerful families in China.

Store setup

The Jewish Sassoon family, led by Patriarch David, first began exploring opportunities in China in the 1840s, a decade after moving from Baghdad to Bombay and establishing several successful businesses. Madhavi Thampi, who taught Chinese history at Delhi University for 35 years, says in her book that the key to her enduring success was her flexibility and readiness to expand. Indians in China, 1800-1949.

“They were not necessarily pioneers, but they knew how to take advantage of the opportunities that arose,” Thampi writes.

The family opened a shop on the Chinese mainland in 1844, two years after the First Opium War between Britain and the Qing Dynasty ended in a humiliating defeat for the Chinese. The post-war Treaty of Nanking forced the Qing rulers to open China to British merchants.

David Sassoon’s second son, Elias David Sassoon, or E.D. Sassoon, first came to Canton in 1844 and moved to Shanghai a year later, realizing that the best business opportunities were in this coastal city.

By this time the family was already making significant profits from the opium trade to China. “Approximately one-fifth of the opium brought to China was transported by the Sassoon fleet.” Shanghai Star It was said in a 2001 article. “They brought Chinese opium and English cloth, they took silk, tea and silver.” Stories of the Sassoons’ wealth in China reached Bombay, and many business leaders attempted to move to Shanghai to replicate the success.

“After his father’s death in 1864, ED Sassoon decided to break away from the parent company under the management of his brother Albert and start his own company,” Thampi writes. “In 1872, he founded a new company, E.D. Sassoon & Sons, with headquarters at 5 Renji Road in Shanghai, but this company became known as the ‘New Sassoon’ firm, as opposed to the ‘Old Sassoon’ company in popular parlance. .”

Elias Sassoon imported fabric from England and sold it to the most exclusive department stores in Shanghai, catering mostly to wealthy European settlers. His son Jacob Sassoon joined the business and took over after Elias’ death.

“The Sassoons… continued their passion for seeking newer avenues for profitable investment,” says Thampi. “North British Fire and Marine Insurance Co. As agents of Ltd, they were engaged in insurance business and shipping. Later, during the struggle to secure credit for the Chinese government in the 1890s, the ‘old’ company David Sassoon & Sons offered sterling loans for railway construction.”

While both old and new Sassoon companies continued to grow in China, they continued their business activities and philanthropies in India.

“Taking advantage of the newly obtained concession allowing foreigners to establish factories in China, both Sassoon firms established spinning and weaving mills, as well as rice, paper and flour mills in China,” Thampi writes. “Later they even attempted to establish breweries and laundries.”

Both companies employed mostly foreigners in senior management positions and filled nearly all blue-collar jobs with local Chinese.

smartest move

As trade between China and Europe increased in the last decades of the 19th century and the importance of opium diminished, a change in the business environment occurred as Qing rulers were able to regulate the importation of the drug. In 1907, the Qing Dynasty signed the Ten Year Agreement with British India; Under this agreement, China agreed to ban domestic opium cultivation and consumption, with the understanding that Indian opium exports would decline proportionately and cease completely within ten years.

From the 19th to the 20th century, the activities of the old Sassoon company in China were greatly reduced and its position was taken by the new company.

By this time, the new Sassoon business empire was run by Elias Sassoon’s son, Jacob Sassoon, who held the official title of British Baronet. Under his management, the family added real estate to its portfolio in Shanghai, which Thampi described as “the smartest move.”

“Under the names of various companies such as Hua Mao Real Estate Co., Shanghai Real Estate Co., and others, they began to acquire first-class properties, especially along the coast,” Thampi writes. “In the nineteenth century their profits from real estate were estimated to be about one-nineteenth of the profits from opium; but from the early 1920s, with the end of the opium business, real estate became the most profitable segment of their business throughout the empire.”

leave india

In the 1920s, the Sassoon empire was headed by Jacob Sassoon’s nephew, Victor Sassoon. He served in the British Royal Flying Corps during the First World War and even survived a plane crash, but the injuries this gave him affected his mobility for the rest of his life.

Victor Sassoon seems to have had a busy life. He became Baronet of Bombay after his father’s death in 1924. He divided his time between Poona (now Pune) and Shanghai and was involved in colonial administration in British India, serving twice as a legislator in the 1920s. He was also a member of the Royal Commission to investigate working conditions in India.

In the 1920s, as his family’s Chinese real estate empire reached new heights, Victor Sassoon opened Sassoon House on the Shanghai Bund, which would become home to the Cathay Hotel. The family owned many properties on the Bund that survive to this day.

Meanwhile, as the independence movement gained momentum in India, Victor Sassoon became disillusioned with the country. “The situation of the foreigner in India did not look very bright,” he told Reuters in an interview in July 1931. He said the family’s business in India was contracting and their only major enterprise in the country was cotton mills. He concluded that Sassoons could not compete with Indian firms with small overheads.

He announced his intention to leave India for Shanghai and make the Chinese city his main center of activity. “Then the political situation also does not encourage anyone to start big projects in India,” Victor said in the interview. “India under Swaraj looks set to be in big trouble. China, on the other hand, is recovering from its civil wars and other troubles. “In India there is a general feeling against foreigners developing the country and they call it ‘exploitation’, but in China they welcome foreigners working for China’s interests.”

When Victor Sassoon decided to leave India, the capital of his company, ED Sassoon & Sons, was 1 billion rupees, while the capital of ED Sassoon Banking Co Ltd in Hong Kong, the finance company he headed, was 1 billion rupees. million pounds.

In October 1931, Victor Sassoon left Bombay for Shanghai, but still retained a degree of optimism about India’s future. “I believe that everyone in this country will use every influence to prevent political unrest and to achieve consensus among communities for this purpose,” he told the Straits Times. “If this is achieved, I am sure that next year will be a happy year for India.” He said he wants to visit India regularly.

The move to Shanghai turned out to be lucrative, at least initially. “During the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai witnessed an influx of wealthy Chinese from other parts of the country due to the widespread conditions of insecurity prevailing in much of China at the time,” Thampi writes. “The Sassoons took advantage of this situation to make even larger profits through the issuance of shares and bonds.”

reversal of luck

The family’s luck began to unravel when the Imperial Japanese Army occupied Shanghai in 1937. The foreign-administered areas of the city, the International Settlement and the French Concession, received an influx of refugees, although they were more or less independent from Japanese occupation.

For three years, the Chinese city offered unconditional asylum to Jews fleeing the Nazis, and the Sassoons made financial contributions to their fellow Jews. Negotiating with the Japanese to keep them out of colonial territories, Victor Sassoon knew it was only a matter of time before Japan took over the International Settlement. In the spring of 1941 he set out from Shanghai for Bombay. In December of the same year, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was drawn into the war, making the International Settlements and the French Concession in Shanghai a target for the Japanese.

When the Japanese occupied all of Shanghai in 1941, they forced the Jews to move into a ghetto.

Exiled from his favorite city, Victor Sassoon only returned after the war ended in 1945. But instead of relocating, he sold his assets to Chinese businesses under the Kuomintang regime and moved to the Bahamas. Other western settlers were less foresighted than Sassoon, and had no choice but to leave China when the communists won the Civil War and established the People’s Republic of China.

The Cathay Hotel was purchased by a Chinese company in 1947 and was allowed to operate for three years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It was taken over by the government and used as the local municipal construction department until 1965. It has been partially restored as a hotel.

Childless, Victor Sassoon died in 1961 at the age of 79, having secured the family fortune.

Sassoon House, like other buildings on the Shanghai Bund, has been tastefully restored, but the center of commercial activity in the city is now on the other side of the river, where an impressive skyline reflects the country’s economic might. To this day, tourists cruising the Huangpu River hear stories of the wealthy colonial family from Bombay who became businessmen at the expense of the poor masses of humiliated China.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer based in Mumbai. His Twitter account is @ajaykamalakaran.