One of the best books I read last year was Jonathan Kaufman’s The Last Kings of Shanghai, which tells the fascinating story of the rival Sassoon and Kadoorie families and how they helped shape twentieth-century Shanghai.
Joseph Sassoon, a professor at Georgetown University, has written an even more recent book looking at how his distant family built a global trading empire and the factors that contributed to its eventual downfall several generations later. I borrowed a copy from the national library here in Singapore and look forward to reading it (for those less inclined to read the book, the Times of Israel has written up a detailed review, link here).
Joseph Sassoon also gave a short talk at the Bodleian Libraries introducing the book last year – some notes are below just for ease of reference, but it’s an interesting listen.
Introduction: the great merchants of the 19th and early 20th century shaped the globalization of today and, through the history of one preeminent trading family, the book shows how that happened amidst a captivating world of politics, business and society. The Sassoons, a Baghdadi Jewish trading family, built a global trading enterprise by taking advantage of major historical developments during the 19th century. Their story is not just of an Arab Jewish family that settled in India, traded in China, and aspired to be British; it also presents an extraordinary vista into the world they in which they lived and prospered, economically, politically and socially, and the 150-year globalization of which they were a part was all encompassing.
They traded with members of every religion and sect around the world, they travelled extensively not only for business, but also to explore new countries. And the interesting thing is that they felt at home wherever they settled, whether in India or Britain or China, in spite of being a minority everywhere, both in terms of religion and being foreigners in India, China and Japan. The book is not only about their rise but also about their decline — why it happened, how political and economic changes after World War I adversely affected them, and finally, how realizing their aspiration to reach the upper echelons of British society led to their disengagement from business and prevented them from adapting to the new economic and political world order.
The founder of the dynasty: David Sassoon, who began in Bombay by exporting British textiles to Persia, Iraq and the Gulf countries while importing local products from the Gulf and selling them to India. His knowledge of local economies and their languages, his reliable Jewish correspondents in several trading centers, and his firm’s reputation swiftly made his business one of the largest in India. The family soon became one of the most important textile merchants operating between Britain, India and the Gulf. Then came the Opium Wars, which legalized opium trading and opened China to foreign merchants. The Sassoons, as did other merchants, exported opium to China and imported tea and silk. Cotton and opium, the two most important trader commodities in Asia during this period, enabled the expansion of the business. This coincided with a period when free trade became so uniquely central to democratic culture and national identity in Britain. The family’s interests were similar to those of the British empire. In this decade, the foundation for common interests such as free trade of opium was laid and in later decades this concurrence of ideology and Sassoon interests would serve them well, at least until World War I.
There was no single event that elevated the Sassoon family into a premier position. David Sassoon was risk-averse by nature and, having lost everything in Baghdad, was very reticent to indulge in risky ventures. It was a brick by brick strategy, and they were aided by international events such as the American Civil War which rocketed the price of cotton, the opium wars which opened China, and the opening of the Suez Canal that led to faster and cheaper global trade. It’s remarkable how much they expanded, and all the areas that they expanded to. The vast majority were seaports and the three main hubs were Bombay, then Shanghai and then London. This commercial success continued in spite of the fact that David Sassoon died in 1864 and splits within the family that followed his death. One competitor summed up the station by the end of the 1860s: “Silver and gold, silks, gums and spices, opium and cotton wool and wheat – whatever moves over sea or land feels the hand or bears the mark of Sassoon.”
Language as an advantage: He thinks one of the reasons for the success of the family was its ability to correspond throughout the globe in a language that was almost indecipherable unless one was a Baghdadi Jew. The family archives contain incredible copious correspondence, with almost every scrap of paper kept. Most of the business correspondence was written in this dialect, what is termed today as Judeo-Arabic, but the real term is Baghdadi Jewish dialect. To prevent outsiders from reading their letters, all family members used it until the first World War. This became almost a hidden history for researchers over many decades because of the inability to decode it. He also argues that interestingly the focus on this language might have eventually worked to their disadvantage. They needed to hire only workers and representatives who knew the language, so the pool selection became more limited as the business developed.
Main characters in the book: David’s eldest son was Abdullah, who in the 1870s became Sir Albert. David’s second son was Elias, who developed the business in China, but eventually split and created a rival company. Both companies carried the name Sassoon: the first, which Albert inherited, was called David Sassoon & Co., the second one was called E.D. Sassoon & Co.
There was also Flora (Farha) Sassoon, who got very little attention in previous books about the Sassoons. The author believes that she was the first CEO in in the world at the end of the 19th century. She was very competent and effectively already in charge of the company’s business in Asia. Despite his misgivings about having a woman run the business, Albert knew well how capable and determined she was and thus acquiesced, as even more reluctantly did his other brothers who lived in London at the time. Farha wasted no time and promptly immersed herself in the business. Aged 38, she wasn’t satisfied just to raise her three children and enjoy the wealth left by her late husband. She had ambition, was an avid reader, not only of the stream of reports reaching her desk, but also of information about the different commodities handled by the company and the global events that might influence their prices. By the end of 1894, Farha was admitted as a full partner in all the offices of David Sassoon & Co. and had full signing authority, although she did not get the percentage (equity) that she deserved. It wasn’t long before some veterans began to compare her with her great-grandfather David. She even revived an old rule of his that had long fallen by the wayside: all correspondence must be dealt with the same day. Under her reinvigorated leadership, the locus of power in the company shifted perceptibly east, away from the Sassoon’s headquarters at 12th Leadenhall Street in London.
The final character he covers in the talk is Victor Sassoon. He was a colorful personality, a flamboyant tycoon who was all his life restless. He began his career in Bombay but decided to shift the business and his assets to Shanghai as he believed that China was more stable than India, a decision that would have severe ramifications two decades later. He inherited large sums of money and then made a fortune himself in Shanghai real estate, only to lose most of it with the takeover of communists in 1949, which was followed by nationalization of all foreign assets. Victor loved to be in the international scene and when Japan invaded Shanghai in 1937, he wanted to mediate between them and the British. Once World War II broke out, he left China and made himself a commentator on world affairs. He was a true bon vivant and playboy most of his life. He hobnobbed with celebrities and dated some of the most famous actresses. He was a fanatic photographer and one of the first to carry a camera wherever he went. His second and most ardent love was horse racing. He won the Derby four times but for someone who understood horse racing, he surely bet on the wrong horse at the time i.e. China. As he put it later, “well, there it is, I gave up India and China gave me up.”