Kings of Shanghai

by Jonathan Kaufman

Kings of Shanghai tells the story of two Jewish families - the Sassoons and the Kadoories - who immigrated to China in the mid­ nineteenth century and became dynasties of a sort, standing astride Chinese business and politics for more than 175 years. The Kadoories were aristocrats while the Sassoons were essentially royalty, overseeing and governing the Jewish community in Baghdad across many generations. Forced to flee in the nineteenth century, the Sassoons spread out over central Asia, with two sons going to Shanghai following the Opium Wars to establish a business empire that would launch them into the upper echelons of the British establishment. The Kadoories followed soon after, their patriarch Elly first working for the Sassoons and then, after being fired, establishing a rival and equally successful trading company of his own. Jonathan Kaufman traces the intersecting stories of the two families over the course of the next century as they gathered strength and influence through the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, weathered the fall of the emperor, blossomed during the Jazz Age and civil war, and resisted Japan's brutal occupation and the ensuing Communist takeover. Kings of Shanghai is at once the intimate story of two families and a sweeping account of how modern Shanghai was born.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, China, Jewish, Asia, Biography, Book Club

400 pages, Hardcover

First published June 2, 2020

Reviews

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Sassoon and Kadoorie family dynasties hobnobbed with the rich and famous around the world, making millions in China before China became a world power. These two Jewish families originated in Baghdad and immigrated to India and finally China, with each family dominating Hong Kong and Shanghai. Being a larger family, the Sassoons continued to have influence in India and London whereas the Kadoories concentrated their wealth in China. Both families could count world leaders among their inner circle and played a role in the advancement of the Chinese economy up to this day. If one is looking for a book specifically on how these families helped the Jews of Europe escape the Holocaust, this is not that book although there is a chapter devoted to that. And if one is looking for mention of Vidal Sassoon, he’s not here either because he is not related to these Sassoons. The family can claim 1920s playboy Victor Sassoon of Shanghai as well as feminist newspaper editor Rachel Sassoon Beer of Victorian London. I have a feeling I will be reading about them further. Author Kaufman, who has been posted to Shanghai throughout his writing career, helps one fill in the gaps of Chinese and world history. I found his account to be readable although not meaty and I will be pursuing his other two books. An informative piece about Jewish China through an economic historical lens.

🇨🇳 4 stars 🇨🇳

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you know nothing (or very little) about the Kadoorie and Sassoon families, this is a good introduction; It's an easy, fast read and gives you a good overview of their lives and the times they lived in. But I used to live in Hong Kong (and was married to a Hongkong & Shanghai Bank officer), know quite a bit about Chinese history, have visited the Jewish Museum in Shanghai (re-purposed from its former role as the city's synagogue) reading every display and text panel, and even briefly corresponded with the (infamous) mistress and 'fellow party-goer' of Victor Sassoon, the former New Yorker correspondent Emily Hahn (she was the aunt of one of my best friends), so I was terribly disappointed. I was looking for more than an afternoon's read in an easy chair. (If you're looking for another easy afternoon's read on 1930s Shanghai and 1940s Hong Kong, read Emily Hahn's wonderfully gossipy and catty book [book:China to Me|560930}, if you can find a copy. She was an amazing woman--a graduate with a mining degree from Minnesota who took off for China because, as she put it, "Nobody told me not to go.")

In short, for me (and therefore for other readers who may have a more substantial knowledge of China and Hong Kong), there were very few new bits of information (spoiler alert: one of the more interesting was the fact that Victor Sassoon collected ivory) in The Last Kings of Shanghai . I was looking for a more in-depth story behind how they made their fortunes (starting with the Kadoorie's involvement in the opium trade), their business partners, how they structured their deals, as well as a more questioning look at the families' inner and outer lives. We don't even learn whether they they were practicing their faith; did they keep a kosher home? Go to synagogue? There's a bar mitzvah but.... In short, I didn't learn very much new about these two families than what I already knew from reading the magazines that Hong Kong beauty shops used to keep on hand for their clients.

But don't let this spoil the book for you if this is new material. It's well-written and engaging and worthy of the high ratings many readers gave it, it was just 'too little and too late' for me.

[Martin, I stand with ISRAEL · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about two Jewish families that migrated from Baghdad to Shanghai. By the 1930s, the Sassoons and Kadoories accumulated great wealth and influence in China. Along the way the families profited from the Opium wars, suffered under Japanese occupation and lost everything in the Communist takeover.

The most impressive achievement of the two families was to save 18,000 jews from the holocaust. The Sassons and Kadoories paid for the trip to Shanghai, food and shelter for the Jews.

Upon taking over Shanghai, the Japanese’s separated the Jews from the rest of the population and created a ghetto. Luckily for the Jews, a gestapo agent came over from Germany to see what could be done with them. His answer, put the Jews on broken down boats and set them adrift in the ocean and then sink them. THOSE ARE THE GERMANS WE ALL KNOW AND LOVE. 😤😡🤮
🤬. The Japanese, according to the author, were horrified by this idea. I find that hard to believe. In any event the Japanese left the Jews in squalid conditions with the bare essentials for life.


The Sassons and Kadoories tried to finagle the Japanese to make life a little better in the ghetto and for the most part most of the Jews survived the occupation.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a non-fic history of several generations of Jewish families, which came to China in XIX century and became one of the richest men in Shanghai prior to its fall to communists in 1949. I read is as a part of monthly reading for March 2021 at Non Fiction Book Club group.

While the title stresses kings plural, the first family, Sassoons gets much more space. This is an old line that lived in Bagdad for generations, and was one of the richest Jewish families there. Members of the family often acted as “Nasi,” or “Prince of the Jews”—Ottoman’s intermediary in dealing with Baghdad’s influential Jewish population. In the 1820s local administration decided to get funds by imprisoning David Sassoon, heir apparent. He runs away and settles in British India, starting with no money but a well known name in the region. One of his sons, Elias, ended up in Shanghai and quickly started a lucrative opium trade, undercutting the previous leaders but joining forces with a local Chinese group. Before the opium trade was outlawed the family controlled like 70% of it. Sassoons mostly shifted to England and several became knights and barons. WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon from this branch.

The second family, started by Elly Kadoorie, who initially worked for Sassoons, but then managed his own business, Elly formed a stock brokerage company. He almost got broke with investment in rubber in the early 1910s but ended up by consolidating rubber plantations under a single management.

Both families actively invested in real estate in Shanghai, including the most magnificent hotels. In the 1930s they support 18000 Jews running from Nazis. Japanese attitude toward Jew is curious, they assumed that books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a fabricated antisemitic text) were true and Jews really rule world behind scenes, but they should not be destroyed, but used instead. Therefore majority of Jews who ended up in Shanghai survived.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. The Sassoons and Kadories had an amazing relationship both with China and each other. I was not familiar with either family, both rooted in Baghdad and both of which landed in Shanghai. While they engaged in the opium trade and were not always good employers, they did transform Shanghai and did use their resources to rescue Jews from the Nazis. That's a top level synopsis that doesn't touch the degree to which Kaufman has created an accessible and highly readable history that shines light on a bit that's not received attention. He's done a remarkable job of researching these families and brining them to life. I wish I'd read this before visiting Shanghai as it gives great insight into the city as well. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. For non-fiction fans looking for an unusual and gripping saga.

[Camelia Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Last Kings of Shanghai is the history of two Jewish families, the Sassoons and the Kadoories, both originated from Baghdad and made fortunes in China. The Sassoons’ history goes back a thousand years. They were once Jewish merchant princes in the Ottoman empire. After being expelled from Baghdad in the mid 19 century, David Sassoon went to India, established business in Bombay, and became a British citizen. He then sent one of his eight sons to Hong Kong and Shanghai. The Sassoons, like all other major western businesses in China at the time, were involved in the Opium trade. The Kadoories were newcomers compared to the Sassoons, but, according to the author, they were more willing to engage with Chinese outside of business interests. Both families, like many rich westerners at the time, failed to grasp the reality that gave rise to Communism.

Shanghai Ghetto took up a chapter. It is fascinating that the Jewish conspiracy worked in favour of the refugees. The author failed to mention that only Jews who arrived after 1937 were forced to move to Hong Kou, the ghetto. The Sassoons, the Kadoories, and many more were allowed to stay where they were.

The Last Kings of Shanghai covers 150 years’ history of the two families. There are many characters, all described in broad strokes. It can be frustrating how fast the author moves from one character to the next. The book also briefly shows how today’s Shanghai and Hong Kong came to be. The author writes about the good and bad aspects of colonialism, but he is hardly impartial.

One character stands out–Emily Hahn, the once lover of Victor Sassoon. I had an impression that Emily Hahn was only a thrill-seeking socialite, but I was wrong.

It is interesting how different business decisions made by the Kadoories and the Sassoons set their fortunes apart. Since 2019, the political climate in Hong Kong has changed again. The story of the Kadoories continues.

[East West Notes · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Kings of Shanghai (2020), Jonathan Kaufman chronicles the stories of the two rival Jewish dynasties that dominated Shanghai’s business, political and cultural scene for generations. The vibrant history of the Kadoories and the Sassoons is the story of modern commerce and an excellent primer on the British in Shanghai and Hong Kong. It’s excellent to see a book cover Shanghai’s rise before World War II and the Chinese Communist Revolution. This is particularly enjoyable since so many of Shanghai’s historic landmarks hail from this era.

This tumultuous history begins in Baghdad, where both families trace their origins. The merchant Sassoon family had lived as near-royalty for almost eight hundred years before expelled as refugees and forced to re-establish themselves in British India. Baghdad had been a cosmopolitan, multicultural society and the centre of international trade. The Sassoons worked as merchants, intermediaries and royal advisers, until political collapse forced them to leave with little more than the clothes on their backs. Within one generation, they had established themselves in India and reached the highest levels of British society. Through their careful study of new technology, intelligence gathering and emphasis on education, the family launched trading companies which became global entities. Trade expanded into steamships, telegraphs, banks, hotels and utility companies. Business inquiries were received in “Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Chinese and Hindustani.” The basis of this wealth was the opium industry, where the family was able to defeat their rivals by a superior supply chain from India. Although the family was keenly interested in funding schools in both China and India, the benefits of their philanthropy surely paled in comparison to the harm done by importing opium.

It’s easy to miss one innovation shared in this book in all the talk of telegraphs and electric companies. The Sassoons created new schools which would funnel new employees into their extensive company operations. In an age of unpaid internships and devaluation of university degrees, it’s unsettling to read about companies taking the time to support and shape future employees when they were barely out of childhood. This school also created their great Shanghai rivals, the Kadoories. Although these two families were both originally from Baghdad and both Jewish, the comparison of the two families provides essential points on how to manage a family dynasty and maintain power.

Kaufman includes many personal stories and quotes which make these family members come alive. Various methods were used in an attempt to block these families from joining British boards of directors and from obtaining British citizenship. Additionally, despite having a British wife and making considerable financial and educational investments in the UK and the larger empire, the Kadoorie patriarch found himself repeatedly blocked from British citizenship. While sailing at the start of WWI, some of the family nearly found themselves as essentially stateless. Citizens of Baghdad, then under Ottoman Turkish Empire rule, were treated as French nationals in China. In one scene, Elly Kadoorie explains to intractable British officials in Hong Kong that he is French, born in Baghdad. Naturally, this constant risk of expulsion and statelessness resulted in some financial support for Zionism, but the entrepreneurial families soon found they couldn’t control how their investments were being diverted or utilised and scaled back their support.

Although these families had lent support to the British military in India, had influential friends and owned enviable properties in England, they were not always accepted as being truly British. “The Sassoons, collecting knighthoods and royal invitations and enjoying dinner at weight-loss cures with the heir to the British throne, saw themselves as British. The Chinese, seeing the Sassoon business interests advancing beneath the Union Jack, saw the Sassoons as British. But many British saw the Sassoons as Jews.” For the Kadoories, their rivals in the business rivals responded with chilling, callous and childish anti-Semitism in their defeats, even laughing at the death of a Laura Kadoorie, who was killed when she ran back into a burning building in hopes of saving a governess. They described her “smoked and dead as a kipper” and lamented her husband “found the door!”

The Sassoons ‘kept their distance from Zionism’ preferring to align their future to Britain. Much of their time and energy was spent cultivating connections the British, rather than the local Chinese, and the Sassoons’ daily life showed the influence of Baghdad and Bombay rather than China. The served Sunday curries and Indian desserts. They had little interest in religion or following a Kosher diet. The subject is not within the scope of this book, but I do wonder if families such as the Sassoons and the Kadoories were not fully courted by those seeking to promote the Israel cause, as the two Jewish families were not Ashkenazi. Even now there is much debate over discrimination of Jews of Middle Eastern, North African and Spanish descent in Israel.

Kaufman pulls from contemporary Chinese authors, diaries and newspapers to give an account of the gross inequalities between Shanghai’s foreign residents and the local, working class Chinese. It is a common complaint that Western memoirs and histories of jazz-age Shanghai don’t provide enough information about the culture of the local Chinese people, but that is surely due to the extremely segregated society they lived in. Many of the first-hand accounts likely do not share any information about the local Chinese people because the authors themselves had no interest in the local Chinese people or learning the language.

In between the business deals, the decadent parties and descriptions of sensuous luxury, Kings of Shanghai shares reports of Chinese children suffering from starvation, severe malnutrition and lead poisoning. Kaufman acknowledges that the Shanghai settlement did offer some protection for the local Chinese, given the proximity of warlords and invading Japanese soldiers, while also recognising how the exploitation of the Chinese workers clearly led to mass support for the Chinese Community Party. “For some Chinese, Shanghai was a daily reminder of China’s military defeats and humiliation. For others, it illuminated the future.”

The Cathay Hotel (now the Peace Hotel), founded by Victor Sassoon, was the epicentre of influential foreigners and only open to the wealthiest of Chinese visitors. One newspaper column observed how these places benefited from Chinese money and labour, but had segregated bathrooms for “Gentlemen” and “Chinese.” Popular writer and literary critic Lu Xun described how he was ignored by the Chinese lift operator and walked up to the seventh floor to visit a British friend. These slights and insults are a common thread in this history and the reader can feel the resentment build as wealth pours into city.

One leading female figure in the book is author, journalist, mining engineer and Red Cross worker Emily Hahn, who was the lover of both Victor Sassoon and Shao Xunmei, a wealthy Chinese poet educated in Cambridge and Paris. Despite how she was obviously bowled over by Sassoon and his opulent world, she had a journalist’s eye for how life was for the local Chinese and repeatedly told him not to believe everything his Nationalist partners were telling him. At thirty-two years old she was “a superb woman, brilliant, beautiful…extraordinarily clever, smokes cigars, talks Chinese, has every man love her.” There was a exquisite scene where she and Victor Sassoon met again in their advanced years and to reminisce about the Shanghai of their youth.

Kaufman thankfully takes a journalist’s approach to briefly summarising sweeping historical events such as the Opium Wars, the Japanese occupation and the revolution. Occasionally family sagas can become overwhelming, but the chapters in Kings of Shanghai often started with a brief recap. If you are an old China hand, you won’t find yourself having to re-read much on the founding of the CCP or the Cultural Revolution, but enough context is provided to bring unfamiliar readers along with the story.

Putting business aside, these two families would come together in a massive project to protect and support the arriving Jewish refugees from Europe. This section also introduces the diplomat Ho Feng-Shan, who issued exit visas to Jews in Vienna which allowed them to get transit visas to escape to other countries or travel onward to Shanghai. Like many books on the Holocaust, it includes lengthy descriptions of the banal bureaucracy of mass murder coupled with uplifting personal observations. From Feng-Shan’s poem to his wife, “The gifts Heaven bestows are not by chance, the convictions of heroes not lightly formed

Japan’s opinions on Jews and the relationship of the Japanese occupiers with the Jewish refugees could have easily be its own book. In Kings of Shanghai, it is revealed in deft profiles of Japanese officers and their strategies for acquiring finance and building infrastructure in their rapidly expanding Chinese territories. Their ambitions begin with the financing of Japan’s military for the Russo-Japanese War by the German born, Jewish American Jacob H. Schiff. His arrangement of substantial loans for Japan’s military led to half the construction of the Japanese navy. Japanese soldiers returned from the war with Russia with copies of the fabricated plans for Jewish global domination, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This led to Captain Koreshige Inuzuka, the head of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Advisory Bureau on Jewish Affairs, to translate the book and base national policy on its arguments. However, unlike other countries, the Antisemitism of Japan considered Jews to be potentially useful allies for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Captain Inuzuka’s reasoning was that since Jews controlled the world markets and heavily influenced Western governments, their dangerous energy could be harnessed by the Japanese. What better way to exploit the purported economic and political power of the Jews than to the engage with, or imprison, the most powerful Jewish men in Asia? This policy would result in 18,000 Jews being kept alive in Shanghai, essentially as hostages, which would require all the organisational skills and innovative strengths of the Sassoons and the Kadoories to support.

Here, it is inspiring to see the younger brothers of the families find their own place in history through science, philanthropy and activism. Despite the squalor and food shortages of the Jewish quarters, even here the local Chinese suffered worse. One newly arrived Jewish family observed Chinese families living in boxes and their children already dying of starvation. Just as Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy river gunboat USS Wake was captured on Shanghai’s Huangpu River by Japanese soldiers. The Japanese lead ship Izumo, built with Jacob Schiff’s loans, entered the harbor. The Japanese military’s belief in the interconnectedness of Jewish individuals was wildly optimistic and sometimes darkly comical. Captain Inuzuka, comfortably ensconced in the office and penthouse he had seized from the Sassoons, asked a Jewish-American volunteer social worker of little consequence to contact the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, assuming they knew each other since they were both Jewish. This gross overestimation of the Jewish Diaspora stemmed from his belief in the Protocols. However, this belief that they had valuable hostages kept the Jewish refugees alive and in one absurd way, they were proven right. The victorious Chinese were able to rely on a connection through the Shanghai Ghetto to Israel in 1979 to request funding for their military. Shaul Eisenberg, billionaire tycoon and international arms dealer, had been a refugee in Shanghai, and promptly arranged the deals.

The Sassoons were completely blindsided by the war, the brutality of the Japanese and then the Communist victory. The effective nationalisation of China’s banks froze Sassoon money and the subsequent property seizures after the revolution were ruinous. Hahn had warned the family, but was entirely disregarded. She said, “Even the aristocrats here, the ones I know, admit that Communism is the only way out.” Her lover was jealous of her side relationship with a Chinese man and grumbled when she used Chinese pronunciation. She observed, “Cheap labor in a vast city like Shanghai means cheap production: furniture and housework and clothing and green stuff. In placid ignorance I sat on top of a heap of underfed coolies.” Indeed, she was less ignorant than others of her set, but her observations were ignored until the British experienced “a rude awakening.”

The patriarch of the Kadoorie family would die in Japanese imprisonment, but his descendants were able to fall back into their Hong Kong business. The Sassoon family, which had overly invested in Shanghai, would never fully recover. In turns humbled and humiliated by their escape from China, both families restarted their lives as their ancestors had done fleeing ancient Israel and Baghdad. The Kadoorie family, always better connected with the Chinese people, started a system of housing, healthcare, training, agriculture, microloans and infrastructure in Hong Kong. Those with an interest in finance or economic development may enjoy this case study of the use of microloans. They learned the importance of diversifying their assets and obtaining information from a number of different sources. When coming across a new gardener on his lawns, quietly brought in by family members as a refugee from the growing chaos on the Chinese mainland, Horace Kadoorie said, “I am a refugee, too.”

It is difficult for most modern readers to really comprehend the sense of urgency and purpose there was in creating a family legacy. Young members of the Sassoon family were trained and deployed for the good of enriching the family. Already well established in Baghdad before a brief downfall, they became the “Rothschilds of the East.” Shanghai’s classic buildings, which survived war and revolutions, are part of that legacy. For the Kadoories, their legacy is in an ongoing successful dynasty, the electricity running through Hong Kong and advancements through charity and education which are more difficult to quantify. The families benefited hugely from empire and exacerbated the gross inequalities in the foreign settlements, but their huge globalist creations created a regional economic boom which led to many Chinese families, also profiled in the book, to start their own businesses. The families seized the energy of a city where “…one could dance all night, go riding at 6 o’clock in the morning, work all day and yet not feel tired.”

[Arjen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I try to read whatever is published on historical Shanghai, the city where I've lived for the last 20 years. Victor Sassoon had already entered my consciousness when I read Emily Hahn's 'China to me' earlier this year (although I remember her love for baboons better than her stories of her lovers). I liked this book and got some fresh insights and some anecdotes I shared with my friends (monkey testicle grafts anyone?). Again, like in Hahn’s writing, I most enjoyed the parts of the story that are set in Hong Kong.

But for me it was fish nor meat. Not enough story-telling to be fully engrossing and not enough references for it to qualify as an academic work. The footnotes got lost on my KOBO e-reader, so that is probably partly to blame. I also think the moral reckoning parts could have been left out (do we really need retroactively hold historical personas to our modern day standards?), the reader can make up their own mind about whether the Sassoon and Kadoorie families should have/ could have been more charitable to Chinese.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy-to-read biography of two merchant-trader families (both Jewish families originating from Baghdad) – the Sassoons and the Kadoories and which interacts with the history of Shanghai (and later Hong Kong) thtough the 19th and 20th Centuries and into the 21st Century.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever since the close of World War II eight decades ago, stories have been surfacing about heroic men and women who saved Jews from certain death in the Holocaust at great risk to their own lives. Names such as Oskar Schindler, who saved 1,200, and Raoul Wallenberg, who saved several thousand, routinely crop up in the pages of history. In fact, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, recognizes more than 26,000 “individuals and groups from 44 countries” as Righteous Among the Nations for similar acts. In Shanghai, two businessmen who helped build modern China deserve equal mention.

Few have been as successful in sheltering and supporting Jewish World War II refugees as Victor Sassoon and Lawrence Kadoorie in Shanghai. Their efforts, combined with that of a sympathetic Chinese consular official in Vienna, saved 18,000 men, women, and children. Sassoon and Kadoorie headed the “rival Jewish dynasties” which are the subject of Jonathan Kaufman’s entertaining and revealing book, The Last Kings of Shanghai.

A GREAT FORTUNE BUILT ON THE OPIUM TRADE
Today, Forbes counts 61 billionaires 61 billionaires in Shanghai, all of them Chinese. But a century ago, two Jewish families, “the Sassoons and the Kadoories were Shanghai’s first billionaires.” The Kadoories made their money the hard way, beginning late in the 19th century through shrewd investments and wise management. But the Sassoons had emigrated to the city in an earlier era when the opium trade was legal around the world (though not in China) and dominated commerce there.

In a study conducted in the 1980s, the Chinese government determined that “profits in opium had brought the Sassoons 140 million ‘liang’ (a common name for the nineteenth-century Chinese currency)—the equivalent of $2.7 billion in 2018 dollars. They then invested that money in Shanghai property, stock, and companies to more than double their profit, to the equivalent of $5.6 billion.” And that was more than a century ago. At the time, they may have been the wealthiest family on the planet apart from a few royal families, even richer than John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.

A SUCCESSION OF REMARKABLE CHARACTERS

The drive and talent that leads to the creation of great wealth tends to dissipate over time. Sons, and sometimes grandchildren, may prove equally successful as the founding patriarch. But in the third generation, or the fourth, the allure of leisure bought by unlimited riches diverts some from the businesses that built their fortune. And others are attracted by careers in professional pursuits or the arts. Moreover, the family’s wealth is divided among successive generations into smaller and smaller shares. Typically, the result is that the family’s wealth gradually dissipates. And that appears to have been the pattern with the Sassoons and, to a lesser degree, the Kadoories.

DAVID SASSOON
Kaufman’s saga begins in Baghdad, the ancestral home of these two remarkable families. For 800 years, the Sassoons had lived at the apex of Iraqi society. The head of their family was routinely recognized as the Nasi, or prince, of the wealthy and influential Jewish community of the city. But early in the 19th century, teenage David Sassoon (1792-1864) was imprisoned by local authorities in a brazen attempt to extort a huge sum of money from his family. His father managed to break him out of prison and hustle him onto a ship bound for Bombay.

There, the young man “and his eight sons built a business empire across Asia. Though he never learned Chinese or English, he piloted his family to dominate the China trade, subdue and shape Shanghai, control the opium business, bankroll the future king of England [George V], and advise prime ministers.” David Sassoon was a force of nature. It’s no exaggeration to write that he helped build modern China. For decades, much of Shanghai’s skyline was the result of his investments. When he and his family were referred to as “the Rothschilds of the East,” he was contemptuous. He was richer than they were and regarded them as arrivistes.

ELLY KADOORIE
Elly Kadoorie (1867-1944) “started out as a student and employee of the Sassoons [in Hong Kong], but he quickly set out to seek his own fortune. Always an outsider, he built alliances with Chinese revolutionaries like Sun Yat-sen, immigrants like himself, and local Chinese, accumulating a fortune that made him one of the richest and most powerful men in Asia.” And eventually his fortune exceeded even that of the Sassoons.

VICTOR SASSOON
David’s grandson, Victor Sassoon (1881-1961), was a “billionaire playboy, crippled at age thirty” in World War I. He “transformed Shanghai into a world-class city, bankrolled the Nationalist government, defied the Japanese, and saved thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism.” But he saw his fortune shrink when he made the bad call to keep the family’s wealth invested largely in Shanghai. The Communists were near the climax of their drive to power in China, but Victor was oblivious. Their seizure of the city in 1949 cost him half a billion dollars, roughly $5.5 billion in today’s currency, and cemented the family’s decline.

ELLY KADOORIE’S SONS
Lawrence Kadoorie (1899-1993) and his younger brother Horace Kadoorie (1902-95) both sought careers overseas independent of their father, Elly, but he forced them back to China to take the helm of the family business. Lawrence took the top spot and proved to be a brilliant investor and manager. Horace devoted himself largely to philanthropy. Both brothers collaborated closely with Victor Sassoon in establishing a network of nonprofit social service agencies and schools to serve the fast-growing Jewish refugee population. While Victor Sassoon persevered in Shanghai, Lawrence gradually shifted the family’s resources to Hong Kong. And, unlike Victor, he and his brother fled the city when the Red Army came near.

THEY EPITOMIZED THE FOREIGN CAPITALISTS WHO PLUNDERED CHINA
Although both families consistently proved generous to their own staff members and household servants, both remained heedless of the racism inherent in their operations. They never seemed to notice the abysmal poverty of the millions of Chinese who barely survived from day to day in both cities where their fortunes were built. The Sassoons compounded the problem by speaking out openly against the Communists. By contrast, the Kadoories wisely refrained from making negative public statements. And that policy paid off when Lawrence successfully negotiated the expansion of his Hong Kong power company into operations on the mainland as well.

WHERE THE FAMILIES ARE TODAY
Today, Elly Kadoorie’s grandson, Michael Kadoorie, appears on Forbes‘ Real-Time Billionaires list at number 330 with a fortune estimated at $7 billion. He remains one of the richest persons in Hong Kong with his holdings in the luxurious Peninsula Hotel Group and the publicly traded power company that supplies electricity for much of the city. But his fortune pales beside that of his grandfather, who was one of the richest men in the world a century earlier.

And no one with the name Sassoon, surfaces on the Forbes list as a billionaire at any level. Three and four generations ago, the Sassoon family possessed what may well have been the greatest fortune in the world. Today, there are Sassoons in Britain who pursue productive and even, at times, distinguished careers, but none lay claim to the surpassing wealth of their forebears. (Incidentally, Vidal Sassoon of the hair salons is not a member of the family. He is, at best, distantly related.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Kaufman is the Director of the Northeastern University School of Journalism and a professor there. Previously he worked for many years as an Executive Editor at Bloomberg News, overseeing more than 300 reporters and editors. They won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. Earlier still, he was a senior editor and Beijing Bureau Chief at the Wall Street Journal. Kaufman is the author of three books about Jews in history. He holds a bachelor’s from Yale University and a Master’s from Harvard in Regional Studies of East Asia.

[Jody Ferguson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his history The Last Kings of Shanghai, Jonathan Kaufman, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter from The Boston Globe recounts a fascinating tale of two Sephardic Jewish families from Baghdad that came to dominate two Western trading houses in Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. The British East India Company, and British firms such as Jardine-Matheson and the Swire Group, are well known for having opened the China trade and for bringing the celestial kingdom and its riches into the Western consciousness. But lesser known—at least in the West—is the story of the Kadoories and the Sassoons.

Kaufman tells us about these two families, expelled from Baghdad in the early 19th century, who first established themselves in British India. There they made a wide network of connections and branched out into the China trade in the latter half of the 19th century. Through hard work, the gathering of intelligence, technological innovation, and timing they grew small trading companies into global giants, eventually amassing billion-dollar fortunes. Almost all of this was done on the back of investments and deals in China.

We learn of the early days of the British presence in Shanghai, the city that was the door to the Yangtze River basin and hence the hinterland of all Central China. Shanghai overshadowed its southern sister port Hong Kong for the first hundred years or so after trade was established. The Sassoon family put deep roots down in Shanghai and some of its most notable landmarks, even today, are Sassoon buildings, including the famous Cathay Hotel, playground for the rich and famous who came to Shanghai in droves on ocean liners before the Second World War. Suave, sybaritic Victor Sassoon, a prodigal son of the Sassoon family, came to run the family company in the 1920s. He epitomized Shanghai’s society smart set, even as he bore the brunt of English anti-Semitic humor by jealous rivals in other British firms in China.

The Kadoorie family was led by its patriarch Elly, who escaped Baghdad and learned business with the Sassoon firm before forming his own company. He faced discrimination in London and decided to focus his business in Asia. His eldest son Lawrence would come to lead the Hong Kong branch of the family firm, while younger son Horace took over the reins in Shanghai.

Both families suffered mightily under Japanese occupation during World War II. Elly would die during imprisonment under the Japanese. Victor Sassoon was able to escape captivity and spent the war years in England and India. But the Sassoon firm would never recover. Victor did, however, have the foresight even in the darkest, earliest days of the war to tell his friends that China would come to dominate in the succeeding decades. “If just learning a few Western tricks enables Japan to almost beat the United States and Great Britain, what a chance for China with 400 million people. We used to rule the world and why shouldn’t we again?” (p. 193) The Kadoorie brothers were much more astute and managed to rebuild themselves on the wreckage of post-war Asia. They moved all their holdings to Hong Kong and were instrumental in making that city into the trading dynamo that it became in the late 20th century.

I felt that the story dragged at times, but Kaufman succeeds in deftly bringing to light this history of two Jewish dynasties with outsized influence in the final decades of the British Empire. One of Kaufman’s most acute observations comes at the end: “The Sassoons [and Kadoories] were in many ways the first globalists. Their experience foreshadowed the problems and anger that globalization would bring in later decades.” (p. 291)

[Bonnie G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fascinating story, much of it new to me (a Jew who lived in China and is reasonably well read on both subjects and who travelled to Henan twice to visit and support the Kaifeng Jews.) As much as I loved learning more about these families, Kaufman's reporting choices and writing style did not really work for me.

I confess that straight ahead biography is not my favorite thing to read. A linear narrative - this happened, then this happened, then that happened - is not something I respond to. It feels like a textbook. I suspect readers who like traditional biography are likely to enjoy Kaufman' style more than I did. I missed having more context. I wish Kaufman had talked more about what was going on in China while the Sassons and Khadooris were building their empires before the final few pages. Its so important to understanding what brought the families down. He spends a lot of time stressing how pivotal was the choice to not criticize China even when it was killing them and their love for Chinese art and generosity to their Chinese servants (all important things), but doesn't talk much about how their choice to fiddle while Shanghai starved might have led to the virulence of the attacks on the family. I don't think the story can be understood without that, but again, maybe that is just me. Still super worthwhile reading.

[Nilesh Jasani · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Last Kings is one of the better, and unfortunately scarce, ways to learn history.

Through the Sassoons and Kadoories, we learn how Middleeast, India, China, and the UK were intertwined from as early as the eighteenth century. We learn about the way goods and people moved regions and shaped societies.

We learn how the free-wheeling businesses drove at least certain regions of China all the time, and the exceptions were perhaps the decades after the Second World War. We learn how Bombay was a sort of center of at least some global business practices when Sassoons were effectively headquartered there in the nineteenth century.

We learn about the influential Jewish dynasties of Asia and the broad economic cycles of Shanghai and HK. The book takes us to the biggest halls and hotels of the inter-war years, and equally makes the readers live in the dungeons of the Jewish incarceration camps.

We learn how singular business decisions make or break big business dynasties and the roles of dumb luck apart from business acumen, connections, and hard work.

These are only some of the huge number of things you learn in this book. For most readers, here is a book with rich, interesting or important, and almost always new knowledge to impart in every section or paragraph. Definitely a must-read for anyone remotely interested in Asian economic or political evolution.

[Agnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Letto con un GdL di amiche che non finirò mai di ringraziare per tutti i super consigli , come questo.
Imperdibile , anche perché ho colmato un’altra delle mie tante lacune, soprattutto riguardo al mondo asiatico.
Da leggere assolutamente per l’accuratezza storica - completamente. documentata nelle note- unita ad una scorrevolezza che fa sì che non si possa fare a meno di continuare.
La sinossi è di già esauriente per il contenuto, per chi fosse interessato a conoscere o ad approfondire , per cui posso solo aggiungere che lo consiglio vivamente : è un saggio che si legge come un romanzo.

[C. Patrick G. Erker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kaufman covers a fascinating history of two Baghdadi Jewish families that helped, perhaps more than any other two families in Kaufman’s telling, create modern Shanghai and Hong Kong. It is certainly an incredible story.

But it’s also a fawning, mostly uncritical, depiction of families whose hands are very much not clean when it comes to China and its history. Three come to mind: first, the families were leaders in the opium trade, destroying millions of lives as they accumulated vast fortunes. Second, as Kaufman notes in almost the last page of the book, the families helped lead to the rise of the Communists in China, which came with it the deaths of untold millions. And last, the families operate in a moral no-man’s land, refusing to criticize China for gross human rights violations such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Kaufman describes the patriarch of the Sassoons as the world’s “first globalist.” I don’t know how proud of that title he should be.

Reading through Kaufman’s notes at the end of the book, it’s clear that most of the content comes from sources sympathetic to the two families, including many of the family members themselves. Kaufman could have written a very, very different book, about the rise of ruthless foreign merchant families operating in colonial China, capitalizing on a people’s addiction to opioids, and then aligning themselves with successive undemocratic leaders, all the while becoming Shanghai’s first two billionaire families. That would have also been a fascinating book, though i suspect he would have had a lot harder time getting some of the stories he was able to get from family members.

[Mostafa · Rating 5 out of 5]

ترجمة ممتازة معتادة ولا غبار عليها من الأستاذ أسامة منزلجي طبعًا، أنت ممكن ميهمكش محتوى أي كتاب بس لو عليه اسم منزلجي أقعد اقرأ واستمتع بالجمل المعادلة للجمل الأصلية في النص اللي بيترجم بيها.. أما الكتاب بحد ذاته فهو كتاب جميل وهام في آن واحد، كوفمان بيكتب تاريخ "يهود" شانغهاي وهم أبناء قومه، هو تاريخ أشبه بالتغني عشان نكون صريحين بأدوار آل ساسون وآل خضوري في جلب الحداثة المعمارية والإقتصادية إلى الصين وكمان إلقاء الضوء على القرن أثناء وجودهم في الصين واللي تصادف مع تحولات عالمية عاصفة أهمها الحرب العالمية الثانية ودخول اليابان في حلف مع النازيين واحتلال الصين فهنا لازم يتقاطع دور أرستقراطية اليهود مع موقف اليابانيين منهم وموقفهم من الهولوكوست.. بيعترف كوفمان إن إثراء ساسون وخضوري كان سببه ومرده الرئيسي للتجارة في معاناة وبؤس الأمة الصينية وإذلالها ولكنه يحاول أن يصبغ الحقيقة المرة بإلقاء الضوء على الأفكار الليبرالية اللي جلبتها الأرستقراطية لمدينة شانغهاي الكوزوموبوليتانية واللي أتاحت بالضرورة الفرصة لشو إن لايّ وماو زيدونج بتنظيم حركتهم الشعوبية متمتعين بظل قليل من الحرية السياسية في منطقة شانغهاي.. لذلك الكاتب مهم لأنه بيشهد على تحول الصين من الأمة المُهانة المُذلة إلى الأمة الانتقامية ذات السيادة والكراهية للإمبريالية وقهرها.. بما إن كوفمان كاتب يهودي شرق أوروبي غير متجرد من ده، فهو بصراحة قدر أنه يتعامل مع هواه ويوظفه في النص بشكل عادل لا يؤثر على مجرى السرد التاريخي لموضوع الكتاب وغير مزعج إطلاقًا.. لذلك قراءة الكتاب ده، واللي هو مكتوب بأسلوب تأريخي مُحبب أصلًا من خلال الشهادات الحية والمذكرات وليس فقط العرض التوثيقي، يعني الكتاب في عرضه أشبه بفيلم نوار من الأربعينيات لذلك هو ممتع جدًا، ولازم تقرأه إذا كنت بتحاول تكون صورة كاملة عن الاستعمار الأوروبي في آسيا، وموقع الحضارات الآسيوية اللي كانت راسخة ولكن كانت هزيلة وضعيفة من حركة التاريخ في القرنيّن 19 و 20

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-written account of how these two families previously from Bagdad who built up China to be what it is today. Despite the setbacks in government, and wars they believed in their abilities to create a modernized country. Using their intelligence, power, and tenacity, they also earned a great deal of respect from the Chinese.

[Olivia Wildenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating. I read this one for bookclub and it sparked such interesting conversations.

[Karen Levi · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mother and her family played supporting roles in this unusual historical drama.
The book--well researched--focused on two Jewish families from Baghdad, via Bombay (old name) and London, who significantly influenced Asia in the last two centuries. Most people are unaware of these powerful clans--the Sassoons and Kadoories being the most well-known.
The Sassoons and the Kadoorie's behaved shamefully and generously in their business and social dealings in China. Their pecuniary interests enabled the ultimate transformation of Hong Kong and Shanghai into modern giants of commerce. Improved trade between Asia and Europe became one of the cogs in the vast machinery of contemporary global economy. Of course these two families could not have accomplished this without the involvement of Europe and the United States.
Both families benefited significantly from the opium trade which is equivalent of today's drug trade. Obviously, financial interests superseded ethical values.
The Sassoons and Kadoories provided valuable support for German and Austrian Jewish refugees who poured into Shanghai in the late years of the 1930's to escape the Nazis. They helped to convince the Japanese to let the Jews survive in a ghetto in Shanghai from 1941-45. Horace Kadoorie personally created the Kadoorie School which is where my mother steps in. A refugee from Germany, she attended the school and recreational center and spoke highly of the Sephardi families who provided meals and support.
The Kadoorie family stayed in Asia after the Communists took over China in 1949. Lawrence Kadoorie facilitated the development of Hong Kong--especially in connecting factories, farms, and homes to electricity--and then assisted Deng in modernizing China, which appeared to lessen the harsh aspects of Communism. Today we witness China as the giant economic power which has altered the global economy at the expense of human rights.

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This narrative would have benefited from more critical manuscript readers, a better editor, and maybe a couple of family trees in an appendix. The author never says how some of the most important characters are related; as one example, we never find out who Victor Sassoon’s parents were or what they were doing in Milan, where he was born. We also never learn whether or to what extent the two families mingled or intermarried or did business. It was also annoying to have to visit the index and then the foreword, 200 pages earlier, to find out the definition of a taipan when I got to the chapter with that term in the title. More important, despite the author’s apparent reverence, it was very hard to find a reason to care about these families who made several fortunes, first in the opium trade and then in real estate, hoteling, and other businesses, by ruthlessly exploiting the native population whom they had no interest in understanding or associating with except to the extent necessary for them to continue increasing their wealth. Information about their personalities and personal lives is mostly not present; we aren’t even told whether or to what extent Judaism was important to them. As others have pointed out, the author also included no commentary on his subjects from Chinese sources. The concluding chapter is much stronger than the rest of the narrative, which would in turn have been improved by rewriting so the story would have made the points the author saved for the end. I finished this book because I wanted to learn about the subject matter, but it was honestly a chore for me.

[Natalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most interesting non-fiction books I have read in ages. I loved learning about Shanghai's and Hong Kong's unexpected history and its ties to the Jewish world.
What blew me away the most were the absolute brilliant and strong women that were operating within the business world of the Sasoons and Kadooris. Those ladies were way ahead of their time (even more than their astonishing male relatives) and I wish they would not have been sabotaged like they ended up being.
This is clearly a recommended read for history buffs.

[Susan in NC · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first reviewer on this page found this book a chatty and interesting introduction to the subject of the Jewish business dynasties, the Sassoons and Kadoories, that operated in Shanghai and Hong Kong. I was totally unaware of this history, so I found it interesting. I listened to the Audiobook, so I got a bit confused about who had done what, particularly between Elly Kadoorie’s two sons, Lawrence and Horace.

I started this book before Russia’s obscene invasion of Ukraine, but got to the harrowing WWII years, in which both families did so much for Jewish refugees from Europe, about the same time as the horrific current images of thousands of Ukrainian fleeing their homes hit our airwaves. Tough to listen to, as we fear the possibility of WWIII, but inspiring to read what the refugees in Shanghai, despite increasingly bad conditions under Japanese occupation, endured and survived. Heartbreaking that they made it through, only to learn from American liberators that millions of European Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

Then came the Chinese Nationalists, then the Communists; Victor Sassoon, the powerful and wealthy socialite at the center of 1930s Shanghai, lost everything and left. The Kadoories thrived in Shanghai and Hong Kong, serving as a bridge between the international business community and the Chinese Communists.

I was impressed by the perseverance and resilience of both families, losing and starting over again throughout the turbulent years in China. I was impressed by the prescience of Lawrence Kadoorie, who predicted China would be a world power by 2000. I didn’t know much at all about China history, but would like to read more.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up after a recent trip to Shanghai and a visit to the Jewish Refugees museum there. I was completely oblivious to this piece of history and the important role that Shanghai played as a safe haven for European Jews fleeing the Nazis in the 30s. This book covers that era, but also the decades before and after thru a portrait of two Jewish entrepreneurial families who shaped much of the city’s growth in the 20th century. Fascinating and really well written.

EDIT: Upon reflection, I realize that the above sounds like a fifth grader’s compulsory book report written under threat of no TV. Or perhaps generated by AI. I summarized the book, which really I just could have gotten off the back cover, and then said it was “fascinating.” This is what happens when your mind is dumbed down by murder mysteries and thrillers. I hang my head in shame.

[Lore]

I have no idea what to rate this book but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had ZERO knowledge about either families and their contributions/legacies discussed in this book. I thought the writing was done well and always kept me intrigued to learn more. I know I will be rereading this book at some point.

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detta är en välskriven företagshistoria med fokus på de två köpmannadynastierna Sassoon och Khadoori. Den skildrar inte bara flera generationer huvudägare och deras signifikanta platser, utan också samtiden och kollegor. Läsvärd.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool audiobook for road trip and I learned so much woah. Especially cool to listen to WW2 parts because truly did not know how it would end which is not the case for most other ww2 stories.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Succession with chinese/jewish characteristics. Excellent, crazy, feels-fictional story. Should be a movie or perhaps a prestige mini series. Finished as an audiobook in the car.

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Last Kings of Shanghai is a worthwhile read. I knew very little of this 150 year period of the history of China and the influence of the Sassoons and Kadoories. It is very interesting.

My three star rating stems from the writing style. I found it cumbersome at times - not the "quick" read as described by some. I also felt the timeline was confusing and I didn't understand why the author skipped back and forth.

Overall, however, it is a very informative book and it expanded my views and thoughts on how China has come to be what it currently is today. That doesn't mean I support the current state, I just understand China's evolution a little better.

[Zoltan Pogatsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent history of the leading Jewish families that built the iconic cultural core of this fascinating city that is both East and West and the same time. The Sassoons and the Khadooris were also both East and West themselves.
The book is very well written, an easy read that is very entertaining but at the same time gives you a sense of history. It is honest about the expolitative character of how these families had made their fortune, including being at the core of the opium trade, and British colonial exploitation. It is also honest about the condescending relationship they had towards the surrounding Chinese society. And about how it was money that mattered before anything else: even though the Khadoories were thrown out of Shanghai, they were once again ready to do business with them only a few decades down the line, and even stay quiet about Tienanmen. All this even though 'Baron Khadoorie' was by then a member of the House of Lords representing Hong Kong.
These are the downsides. The upside is the cultural heritage, above all the Bund, which until today forms the symbolic core of the city, in spite of the new developments in Pudong. And their generosity in helping the Jewish refugees in Europe.
If I have one criticism, it is about not getting a sense of just how rich these people were at different times. It would have been great for the author to somehow provide a sense of that. I sense a lot of contradictions. For instance, they repeatedly claim that they are unable to feed the 20 000 refugees, yet Victor Sassoon just suddenly pops over to South America to buy a huge piece of the countryside to supposedly relocate them. Or the Khadoories survining on small doses of rice and cooked bugs in the internment camp, yet they had a masive ivory and jade collection. Why didnt they just buy their freedom, like so many did?
All in all a very informative and entertaining read for anyone who is in love with Shanghai, like I am. :))
(I am gonna read his other book about being Jewish in Eastern Europe.)

[Sashka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written and gives an excellent narrative of the history of Shanghai and Hong Kong