Chiara Betta.

FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 1

Chiara Betta
[email protected]

THE TRADE DIASPORA OF BAGHDADI JEWS:

FROM OTTOMAN BAGHDAD TO CHINA'S TREATY
PORTS, 1843-1931

I was rather surprised to find that in this cosmopolitan city, this ‘Paris
of the East,’ where so much feverish energy was spent upon the
amassing of wealth and the pursuit of pleasure, there was a veritable
stronghold of uncompromising orthodox Judaism. The stronghold was
rather sparsely manned, it is true, and those who watched over it might
truthfully be described as members of the “Old Guard,” for they
belonged mostly to the older generation, as familiar with quotations
from the Talmud as with those of the Stock Exchange. Israel Cohen,
The Journal of a Jewish Traveller, New York, 1925, 124.

The name of Sassoon is less known in Europe than that of Rothschild,

but among Arab or Banyan traders, even with Chinese and Japanese
merchants, in the Straits as well as on both sides of the Ganges, it is a
name to conjure with...” North China Herald, 8 February 1881.

The study of Baghdadi Jewish traders in South, Southeast and East Asia in the nineteenth

and early twentieth century has so far been neglected, mostly as a result of the great

dispersion of materials related to the Baghdadi Jewish diaspora. So far, we possess only

studies on individual communities and still have superficial awareness on how the various

nodes of the Baghdadi diaspora integrated with each other on a social and commercial

level. Undoubtedly, future research will need to weave together the general and the

particular to provide a complete picture of the Baghdadi experience from British India to

China and from London to Australia.

 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 2

This paper chooses the treaty port of Shanghai to illustrate how Baghdadi Jewish

traders operated between the middle of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth

century. The starting point is 1843, the year Shanghai together with other four cities –the

first so-called treaty-ports- was officially opened to foreign trade after the signing of the

treaty of Nanking which marked the end of the Opium War (1839-1842). In the following

decades the countryside areas, initially designated for the residence of foreign traders,

gradually evolved into two self-governing enclaves, the Concession Française and the

International Settlement. Shanghai’s foreign settlements, like their counterparts in other

treaty ports, never became formal colonies and developed into grey areas where Baghdadi

Jews could freely pursue their own commercial agendas. The following pages will attempt

to piece together the history of Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai in the light of the ambiguous

status of the city’s foreign settlements.

• The nineteenth century spice route

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Jews from Baghdad and its adjacent areas in

the Ottoman empire formed a well-integrated trade diaspora that stretched from Bombay to

Shanghai, with London as a European base. The spatial structure of Baghdadi networks

from India to China followed closely the eastward expansion of the formal and informal

British empire and, as a result, the main nodes of the Baghdadi diaspora took shape in

Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Shanghai foreign settlements.

We can surmise that Baghdadis’ trading networks in South, Southeast and East Asia

reproduced ancient Jewish commercial patterns, which successfully adapted to changing

circumstances, rather than completely new entrepreneurial endeavours entirely originated

 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 3

within the framework of the British empire. Thus, to stress the continuity of Jewish

networks, in this paper I use the definition trade diaspora even if in the last part of the

nineteenth century trade diasporas tended to disappear as a result of the westernisation of

commerce and the consequent creation of large ecumenical trade zones.1

From a longue durée perspective we can find intriguing similarities between ancient

and modern Jewish settlements in China. In this respect, the establishment of Judaeo-

Arabic speaking communities by Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai and Hong Kong in the middle

of nineteenth century should be considered in the broader context of the history of cross-

cultural trade between the Middle Kingdom, Central and West Asia. We cannot, in fact,

overlook that, during the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.) and possibly even earlier, small

numbers of Jewish traders travelled to China using either the overland Silk route(s) or the

maritime Spice route(s), which connected the Middle Kingdom with the Eastern

Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. In the nineteenth century Judeao-arabic

speaking Baghdadi traders, in the footsteps of Britons and Parsis, chose the maritime Spice

route and sailed to China from their Indian outposts of Bombay and Calcutta via Singapore.

As for their most well studied predecessors, Judeao-persian speaking Jews who settled in

Kaifeng, it is not clear whether they reached China by sea or land, probably in the early

days of the northern Song dynasty (960-1127).2 When Baghdadi Jews arrived in Hong

Kong and Shanghai in the 1840s, their Kaifeng brethren, who had staunchly preserved the

faith of their ancestors until the end of the eighteenth century, had already been largely

1
Philip Curtin, Cross-cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984), especially chapter one and chapter
eleven.
2
See especially Donald Daniel Leslie, The Survival of the Chinese Jews: The Jewish Community of K'aifeng.
(Leiden, 1972); idem, “Integration, Assimilation, and Survival of Minorities in China: The Case of the
Kaifeng Jews,” in Jews in China: From Kaifeng…to Shanghai, ed. Roman Malek (Sankt Augustin, 2000), 45-
76.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 4

assimilated by the Chinese host environment, their synagogue was in ruins, and no one

could any longer read Hebrew. Rather significantly, the arrival of Baghdadi traders thus

renewed a long established, though tiny presence, of Jews in China.

• Baghdadi Jews in India

The origins of the trade diaspora of Jews from Baghdad and other areas of the Ottoman

could be traced around the middle of the 18th century when Jewish merchants became

involved in trade between the Ottoman empire, the port of Basra and India. By the late 18th

century Jews from Aleppo, Baghdad and Basra formed the “Arabian Jewish Merchant

Colony” in Surat and together with co-religionists based in Calcutta and Bombay imported

precious stones, rose water and Arabian horses to India. Once Surat lost its commercial

clout, Jewish traders transferred their trade interests to Bombay and Calcutta, which

blossomed into the main centres of the Baghdadi diaspora.3 Originally, Baghdadis in India,

similarly to the Armenians, acted as cross-cultural brokers and belonged to the ‘greytown’

which “stood literally and figuratively between the ‘blacktown’ where the Indians lived and

the ‘whitetown’ of the Europeans.”45 In the early nineteenth century Armenians might have

outnumbered Judaeo-Arabic speaking Jews in Bombay: in 1813 about one hundred

Armenians lived in Bombay whilst in the early 1830s 20 to 30 families of Jews from the

3
Joan Roland, Jews in British India: Identity in a Colonial Era (Hanover, NH., 1989), 15-6; Thomas A.
Timberg, "Baghdadi Jews in Indian Port Cities," in Jews in India, ed. Thomas A. Timberg (New Dehli, 1986),
273; Brian Weinstein, “Judeao-arabic in India,” Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies 1, no. 2 (1999): 62-3.
4
Timberg, “Baghdadi Jews,” 277.
5
Mesrovb Jacob Seth, Armenians in India from the Earliest Time to the Present Day (Calcutta, 1937),
chapter XXV passim; Roland, Jews in British India, 16.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 5

Ottoman empire lived in the city.6 Yet, in the following decades Armenians gradually

retreated from Bombay, whereas the Baghdadi Jewish community grew constantly.

Daud Pasha’s persecution against Jews in Ottoman Baghdad between 1817-1831

and the forced conversion to Islam of the Jewish population of the Persian city of Meshed7

in 1839 contributed to the expansion of the Bombay community. Refugees from these

cities –most notably David Sassoon,(1792-1864), the scion of Baghdad’s most eminent

Jewish family- created successful commercial endeavours, which attracted poor co-

religionists from the four corners of the Ottoman empire thus prompting a continuos flux of

newcomers to Calcutta and Bombay. As a result the term Baghdadi, assumed in both cities

a broad connotation which included “Jews from Syria and other parts of the Ottoman

Empire, Aden and Yemen, all of whom were Arabic speaking, and even Jews from Persia

and Afghanistan, who were not.”8

In Bombay Sassoon, swiftly built an international business empire, became the

uncontested leader of the local Baghdadi community, and formed a durable allegiance with

the British empire. The rise of the Sassoon family as major entrepreneurs associated with

the British shaped the strategies of Baghdadi Jews who resided outside the Ottoman lands:

the Baghdadi commercial elites adopted Anglicised tastes and an Anglicised way of life

and formed an imagined British identity which helped to foster their own business

strategies. By the late nineteenth century the model of the “Oriental” merchant-prince had

already been replaced by that of the English gentleman who aspired to a club membership

and appreciated gentlemanly pursuits. In a few words, Constantinople had been swiftly

6
Mesrovb Jacob Seth, Armenians in India from the Earliest Time to the Present Day (Calcutta, 1937),
chapter XXV passim; Roland, Jews in British India, 16.
7
Contacts between Meshed and Bombay were maintained as late as 1920 Jewish traders from the city, who
were registered as Muslims in their passports, traveled to Bombay. Israel Cohen, A Jewish Pilgrimage: The
Autobiography of Israel Cohen (London, 1956), 215.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 6

eclipsed by London, though Baghdad remained a crucial religious and emotional reference

point for Baghdadi Jews of the trade diaspora.

• From India to China’s Treaty Ports

Without any doubt, the establishment of dense Baghdadi Jewish commercial networks in

China is inextricably linked to the Sassoon family. Shortly after the end of the Opium War

(1839-1842), which sanctioned the cession of Hong Kong to the British and the opening of

five to foreign commerce, Elias David Sassoon (1820-1880), the second son of David

Sassoon, opened branches of the family firm D. Sassoon, Sons & Co. in Shanghai and

Hong Kong thus marking the beginning of a stable Baghdadi presence in China.9 At the end

of the 1860s the Sassoons’ networks in China had taken the form of a grid characterised by

spatial continuity: the Sassoon firms, D. Sassoon & Co. and E. D. Sassoon & Co. (founded

by Elias David Sassoon after the death of the family patriarch) were operating offices in

Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Hankou, Zhifu, Ningbo, and Niuzhuang.10 The treaty port

of Shanghai and the Crown Colony of Hong Kong represented the two main centres of the

Sassoons’ operations in China and, not surprisingly, the offices of the firms were usually

headed by members or relatives of the Sassoon family. In other Chinese treaty ports

Baghdadis remained merely sojourners: young Baghdadi men worked in the Sassoons’

offices for a few years before being rewarded with a coveted transfer to Shanghai or Hong

8
Roland, Jews in British India, 15-7.
9
Letter of Jakob b. Abraham d. Sudea (1895) reprinted in P.G. von Mollendorf, "Die Juden in China,"
Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 39 (1895), 330-1; “Death of Mr. E.D.
Sassoon,” North China Herald hereafter quoted as NCH) , 11 May 1880, 416.
10
The Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan, & the Philippines for the Year 1868 (Hong Kong), 155, 201,
223, 234, 236, 238. In the port of Nagasaki in Japan, which was relatively near to Shanghai, the Sassoons
operated through agents and did not establish a branch office in the city. Lane Earns, “The Shanghai-
Nagasaki Judaic Connection, 1859-1924”, in The Jews of China, ed. Jonathan Goldstein (Armonk, 1999),
159-60.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 7

Kong. Albeit in the late nineteenth century life in smaller treaty ports was characterised by

solitude, the young Sassoon clerks could nevertheless rely on regular contacts with co-

religionists. Huge distances certainly did not hinder marriages, which were arranged with

young women as far away as India. 11

Quite clearly, in the early days, broadly speaking between the 1840s and the 1880s,

the Sassoons adopted a strategy based on constant circulation of salaried employees

between Bombay, the smaller treaty ports, Shanghai and the Crown colony of Hong Kong.

The Sassoon’s employees were often born in Ottoman Baghdad, and the great majority had

been brought up in Bombay. Their lives were shaped by the liberality of the Sassoons: they

usually came from poor backgrounds, had enjoyed access to free education at the David

Sassoon’s school in Bombay and had then been recruited by the Sassoons to expand their

family business in China, as well as, in other outposts of the Baghdadi diaspora such as

Singapore. The Sassoons then also acted as a social-security organisation for former elderly

employees with no relatives who could take care of their needs.12

The Sassoon firms and their modus operandi in China in second half of the

nineteenth century epitomised the transition of Baghdadi Jews in British India, Singapore

and China from a traditional trade diaspora into an enterprising group integrated within the

European dominated world economy. In this respect, the Sassoons gave up traditional

accounting techniques, adopted a business organisation which resembled that of European

trading firms and employed English in commercial transactions. It is not yet clear when

Judaeo-Arabic disappeared from their accounts: certainly in the middle of the 1880s the

11
See for example North China Herald (hereafter quoted as NCH), 20 December 1882.
12
Chiara Betta, “From Orientals to Imagined Britons: Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai,” unpublished manuscript.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 8

files of the Shanghai branch of E.D. Sassoon & Co. which recorded the import of Indian

opium to China were already kept in English and according to double-entry. 13

Trust was a crucial aspect in the relationship between the members of the Sassoon

family and their employees, who were always recruited among Baghdadi Jews. As pointed

out above, the definition Baghdadi in China, like in India, also included Judeao-Arabic

speaking Jews from various areas of the Ottoman empire and even Jews from Iran and

Afghanistan. In Shanghai –to give an example- Simon Abraham Levy, the manager of E.D.

Sassoon & Co. at the turn of the twentieth century, was born and brought up in Cairo and

was therefore, strictly speaking not, a Babylonian Jew.14 What is indisputable is that the

Sassoons did not to hire Ashkenazi Jews, something that can be clearly inferred from the

surnames of employees appearing in various editions of commercial directories.15 The

Sassoons also avoided employing non-Jewish Westerners, though there might have been a

few exceptions such as when Elias David Sassoon recruited a certain A. de Miranda,

probably a Roman Catholic Portuguese, in Hong Kong in 1846.16

Similar to Western firms, the Sassoons, especially in the second half of the

nineteenth century, heavily relied on Chinese intermediaries, the so-called compradores, to

conduct business with Chinese merchants.17 Baghdadi Jews brought up in India were fluent

in Hindustani, a lingua franca spoken in India’s ports, yet, as a whole, in China they did not

learn to communicate in Chinese dialects, could not read Chinese and were not fully

13
I have viewed a number of opium files of E.D. Sassoon, Sons & Co. kept in the Shanghai House Property
Administration Bureau Archives and have formulated the observation on double-entry after reading Jack
Goody, “Rationality and Ragioneria: the Keeping of Books and the Economic Miracle”, chapter 2, in The
East in the West (Cambridge, 1996), 49-81.
14
Public record Office, Kew Gardens. FO 372/47/21695. Sir Pelham to Foreign Office, 22 May 1907.
15
For this paper I have consulted Shanghais business directories from 1868 to 1928.
16
The Hongkong Almanack and Directory for 1846, with an Appendix (Hong Kong, 1846).
17
Zhang Zhongli, and Chen Zengnian, Shaxun jituan zai jiu Zhongguo [The Sassoon group in Old China]
(Beijing, 1985), 120-6.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 9

proficient in local business practices. They were therefore compelled to use the services of

compradores, Chinese merchants who besides acting for foreign firms also conducted their

own private business. The legal position of compradores vis-à-vis foreign mercantile

houses was open to various interpretations since, according to circumstances, they were

sometimes recognised as employees of foreign firms and sometimes as independent

brokers, therefore creating notable confusion as to whom should have taken “final

responsibility for a compradore’s private business.” The issue was especially relevant in a

number of court cases that involved the Tianjin and Shanghai branches of D. Sassoon,

Sons & Co. and their insolvent compradores in the middle of the 1880s. Conflicts arose

especially when compradores incurred in financial losses and it was not explicit whom

should have been liable to pay the creditors. When in 1883 the Tianjin compradore of D.

Sassoon, Sons & Co. could not honour the payment of gold bullion with opium, his creditor

requested the debt to be paid by the Sassoon company on the basis that the compradore

during his transactions had issued receipts in the name of D. Sassoon, Sons & Co. even

when business was carried out on his private account. The demand was however rejected

by the Sassoons who did not want to assume responsibility for what in their eyes was their

compradore’s personal business. The episode highlights that compradores, notwithstanding

their exposure to foreign mercantile practices were still anchored in Chinese business

culture, whereas, at least in this case, the Sassoon firms had readily adopted Western

business culture.18

The spatial arrangements of the Sassoon’s networks in China in the late nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries reflect the expansion of British private enterprise capitalism

18
Motono Eiichi, “A Study of the Legal Status of the Compradores during the 1880s with Special reference
to the three Civil Cases between David Sassoon Sons Co. and Their Compradores,” Acta Asiatica, no. 62
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 10

in China’s treaty ports, areas which developed into self-governing enclaves even if they had

not been officially ceded to foreign powers.19 The Sassoons’ and more in general the

Baghdadis’ extraordinary commercial success in China depended, in fact, largely on the

close association they established not only with the British empire but also with local

British commercial elites. This was especially true in Shanghai, the actual importance of

which as China’s main economic centre in the first decades of the twentieth century cannot

be overstated: by the end of World War One Shanghai had blossomed into an international

industrial and commercial hub with is own distinctive commercial culture. Much of the

city’s phenomenal economic development depended on the fact that two areas the

Concession Française and the International Settlement, were ruled by foreign municipal

councils. The status of the International Settlement was especially ambiguous since no

foreign power held effective control over its municipal council, which was dominated by

the local British oligarchy, formed by hardcore British settlers, the so-called

Shanghailanders. Most significantly, the latter counted on the support of the Sassoon firms,

and more in general of Baghdadi Jewish merchants, who regularly elected a councillor until

the 1920s. British consular authorities were acutely aware of the mutual interests which tied

together Shanghai’s British oligarchy with the Baghdadi commercial elite and stretched

rules by granting British protection to those Baghdadi Jews who as Ottoman subjects were

supposed to receive French protection. The practice was, however, discontinued in 1906

when London finally discovered the unorthodox ways of the Shanghai consulate-general.20

(1992): 44-70.
19
On China’s treaty ports see especially Robert Bickers, Britain in China: Community, Culture and
Colonialism, 1900-1949 (Manchester, 1999), 1-21.
20
Chiara Betta, “ Marginal Westerners in Shanghai: The Baghdadi Jewish Community, 1845-1931”, in New
Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Communities in East Asia, 1842-1952, eds. Robert Bickers and Christian
Henriot (Manchester, 2000), 40,1, 43-6.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 11

The Sassoon firms, especially between the middle of the nineteenth and the

beginning of the twentieth centuries, helped to forge a strong sense of community among

Baghdadis by sponsoring the building of a cemetery and a synagogue. Baghdadi Jews in

Shanghai remained always proud of their Babylonian heritage, which was kept alive in

Baghdadi homes, also after the community, especially the wealthiest members, underwent a

marked process of Anglicisation. From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards,

Shanghai Baghdadis, like those who lived in other communities of the Baghdadi diaspora,

shed their “Oriental” roots by forging an imagined British identity which entailed loyalty to

the British empire, the usage of English as main language and the adoption of a westernised

way of life. Baghdadi shared their imagined identity especially with Parsis, the most

“English” of Bombay’s residents. In reality, among Baghdadis the degree of Anglicisation

depended largely on class: the wealthiest Baghdadis were highly Anglicised, whilst the

middle and lower-middle classes westernised at a slower pace. As for the Baghdadis’

“other”, destitute Jews who travelled to Shanghai from as far as Jerusalem and made a

living either by begging or by peddling goods, did not feel any need to adopt westernised

life-styles.21

• Comparing diasporas: Baghdadi Jews, Parsis and Opium

These (Jews and Parsis) came almost entirely from India,

or parts adjacent, and they were all British subjects.
There were two large Jewish houses, the two Sassoons,
and the remainder of the Jews, and all the Parsees, were
either brokers or merchants in a very small way. They
were quite inoffensive, and their raison d’être was chiefly

21
Betta, “From Orientals to Imagined Britons.”
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 12

the opium trade.22 From the memoirs of Charles M. Dyce,

prominent silk merchant of Shanghai between 1870 and
1900.

To understand in depth the Baghdadi diaspora in China, we should view it in the wider

context of entrepreneurial groups with bases in British India, which occupied functional

niches under the aegis of the British empire in the India-China trade in the nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries. Baghdadi Jews, Parsis and Gujarati Muslims imported to China

cotton yarn and opium, Sindhis concentrated their interests in the silk trade whilst

Peshawari Muslims traded tea, silk and furs. In contrast, Greeks and Armenians, ancient

trade diasporas which were not linked to the British, remained on the fringe of foreign trade

communities in China since their business was mostly confined to petty trade, though a

handful of Greek firms set up what appeared to be flourishing businesses, especially in the

treaty port of Tianjin.23 In Shanghai, Greeks such as M. Pappadopoulos “importer of

Turkish and Egyptian cigarettes” and the “Sino-Egyptian” tobacconists H. Kessissoghlou

and J. Mouradoghlu were prominent in the commerce of tobacco.24

Throughout the 1840s and 1850s Parsis, who had been relevant participants in the

Indian Ocean trade for centuries, represented the dominant foreign diaspora in China and

were active in the colonies of Macao and Hong Kong and the newly opened treaty ports of

Guangzhou and Shanghai. Numbers easily explain the Parsis’ commercial predominance:

in 1848 as many as 50 Parsi merchants were working in Chinese treaty ports and in Hong

Kong and Macao whilst only five Baghdadi Jews -the employees of David Sassoon and

22
Charles M. Dyce, Personal Reminiscences of Thirty Years' Residence in the Model Settlement Shanghai,
1870-1900 (London, 1906), 50.
23
The Comacrib Directory of China (Shanghai, 1928), passim; Claude Marcovits, “Indian Communities in
China, c.1842-1949,” in New Frontiers, 64-8, idem, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947:
Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge, 2000), 147-8.
24
The Directory & Chronicle for China… (Hong Kong, 1910 edition), 899; Comacrib, 450.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 13

Co.- were working in Hong Kong and China’s newly opened treaty ports. More

specifically, in Shanghai in the late 1850s more than ten Parsi firms had opened offices in

the city whereas Baghdadis commercial interests were represented only by David Sassoon,

Sons & Co. 25

In the following decades, however, Parsis failed to develop further their spatial

networks in China and adopted a rather defensive commercial strategy whilst Baghdadi

Jews under the enlightened guidance of the Sassoons firms, gradually build up a steady

presence in Hong as well as in a number of treaty ports. The formidable decline of the

Parsis’ commercial clout could be ascribed to their reluctance to choose China as their

permanent home since, as a rule, they did not bring their wives and children to China. In

Shanghai at the beginning of the twentieth century Parsi presence remained confined to a

group of about forty men for whom Bombay remained their home.26 In contrast Baghdadis

started to settle with their families in Shanghai probably already in the 1870s, and, as a

result, their numbers grew constantly: the community was probably formed by a few

dozens individuals, in the twentieth by a few hundred people.27 As settlers, Baghdadi Jews

exploited the commercial interstices, which took shape in the foreign settlements and

channelled their enormous entrepreneurial drive in the real estate market, one of the most

profitable activities in the city. As sojourners Parsis, remitted their own earnings to

Bombay and carefully avoided any speculative involvement in land dealings, thus failing to

25
Anglo-Chinese Calendar for the Year 1848 (Canton, 1848); Shanghai shehui kexueyuan jingji yanjiusuo
(Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Economic Research Institute), ed., Shanghai dui wai maoyi, 1840-
1949 (The Foreign Trade of Shanghai, 1840-1949) (Shanghai, 1989), Vol. 1, 68-74.
26
"Parsees were not entirely resident in Shanghai for a larger number of years but they came here for a period
and then returned home..." " H.M. Supreme Court. In the Matter of the Parsee Cemetery Trust Deed and in the
Matter of the Act 52, George III, c 101," NCH, 6 July 1906, 36.
27
For a general view of Baghdadis in Shanghai see Maisie J. Meyer, "The Sephardi Jewish Community of
Shanghai 1845-1939 and the Question of Identity" ( London, 1994).
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 14

make considerable profits.

The dwindling number of Parsi firms in Shanghai reflects their extraordinary

decline in the city. In the early twenties Parsi interests were mostly represented only by

two firms: Cawasjee Pallanjee, & Co., which had been operating in China since the time of

the East India Company, and Tata, Sons & Co., a concern belonging to the Tata family,

Bombay’s most prominent Parsi dynasty. As for Gujarati Muslims, a third middlemen

minority based in Bombay, which competed with Parsis and Baghdadi Jews in the India-

China trade, they never formed a significant community and were present in Shanghai

through the firms Abdoolally Ebrahim & Co. and E. Pabaney. 28

The commercial rivalry between Parsis, Baghdadi Jews and Gujarati Muslims needs

to be assessed in the context of the import to China of Indian opium which was legal

between 1858 and the end of 1917.29 Before the legalisation of the opium trade opium

smuggling in Shanghai was controlled by British traders, especially by Jardine & Matheson

and Dent, Beale & Co. and to a less extent by the American firms of Russell & Co. and

Augustine Heard & Co. British dominance is confirmed by the number of opium clippers

which moored in Wusong, near Shanghai, in 1851: 42 were British, 11 American, three

Parsis and only two belonged to the Baghdadi firm of David Sassoon, Sons & Co. Parsi

vessels that reached Shanghai in 1851 exported to India gold bullion and general goods,

whilst those belonging to David Sassoon, Sons & Co. apparently left Shanghai empty.30

Nevertheless, the Sassoons also sold opium in exchange for gold bullion, a line of trade

which needs to be further researched.

28
The Directory & Chronicle for China… (Hong Kong, 1906, 1909, 1910, 1919 and 1920 1910, and 1920
editions), 651-733.
29
For a background of the opium trade see Gregory Blue, “Opium for China: The British Connection.” In
Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan, 1839-1952, eds. Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi
(Berkeley, 2000), 31-6.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 15

After 1858 British merchants gradually disengaged themselves from the opium

commerce, leaving it in the hands of Parsi, Baghdadi Jewish, Gujarati Muslims, and even

Persian firms with strong bases in Bombay. The Persian firms H.M.H. Nemazee & Co. and

M. M. B. Afshar & Co. were latecomers in Shanghai since they established branch offices

in the city in 1895 and 1897.31 Towards the end of the nineteenth century Baghdadi Jews,

especially the two Sassoon firms, represented the main players in the opium trade.32 The

Parsi firms Cawasjee Pallanjee & Co., R.S.N. Talati & Co., Talati & Co., and the Gujarati

Muslims’ concerns Pabaney and A. Ebrahim were also heavily engaged in the import of

Indian opium to Shanghai. Among Parsis, Tata & Co. used four steamers to import opium,

cotton yarn, and other merchandise from Bombay to Shanghai and then exported coal and

other commodities to India.33

Baghdadi Jews, Parsis, Gujarati Muslims not only competed with each other but

also manifested notable solidarity among themselves in safeguarding their own commercial

interests. The commercial elites of these groups routinely lobbied together and petitioned

British consular authorities whenever they felt that their business in the opium trade could

be damaged. In this respect Baghdadi Jews, Parsis and Ismailis formed a common front in

1886 and 1887 to protest against the increase of taxation (import duty and lijin tax) on the

opium they imported from India to China.34 Baghdadi Jews and Parsis co-operated closely

especially after the opium trade came under scrutiny from British public opinion towards

30
Shanghai dui wai maoyi , 79.
31
Wright, Arnold, ed., Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Other Treaty Ports in
China: Their History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources (London, 1908), 654.
32
In 1899 and 1900, E.D. Sassoon & Co.imported as many as 13286 chests of opium from India Zhang
Zhongli and Chen Zengnian, Shaxun jituan zai jiu Zhongguo (The Sassoon Group in Old China) (Beijing,
1985), 22.
33
NCH, 19 January 1894.
34
"Memorial from the Opium Merchants," sent to Sir John Walsham, Brat., H.B.M.'s Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary, Shanghai 25 May, 1886 published in NCH, 11 June 1886, 612; Eiichi Motono,
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 16

the end of the nineteenth century. Their attempts to justify the trade and downplay the

effects of the drug were clearly stated in the interviews they granted to Royal Opium

Commission, set up in India between 1893 and 1894.35

In their interviews Baghdadi and Parsi traders stressed that opium, if used in

moderation, was a safe commodity rather than a dangerous drug with deleterious effects.

Baghdadis consciously exploited the various strands of the leisure discourse on opium

constructed by Chinese in Shanghai and maintained that opium as a recreational activity for

the upper classes usually brought no visible harm to Chinese. Only the lower classes could

be damaged by smoking the drug.36 Accordingly M.S. Howard of David Sassoon, Sons &

Co. maintained that “opium had debilitating effects on those who could not afford it whilst

it was a mere entertainment activity for the upper classes.”37 S.A. Nathan, of E.D. Sassoon

& Co then added that “if taken moderately opium was very beneficial.”38 Baghdadi traders

also skilfully employed the commonly used Western stereotype that whilst Europeans

naturally indulged in drinking alcohol, the Chinese were instinctively drawn to opium. In

this respect E.S. Gubbay of David Sassoon & Co., a long time resident of the treaty ports of

Ningbo and Shanghai contended that “the Chinese who smoked or imbibed opium were

better behaved, more quiet, and far more sensible than those addicted to alcoholic drinks.”39

The high status of opium traders in Chinese was finally upheld by the Parsi Hormasji

Kuvarji who stressed that opium merchants “enjoyed as much respect and credit as tea and

Conflict and Cooperation in Sino-British Business, 1860-1911: The Impact of the pro-British Commercial
Network in Shanghai (London , 2000) , 107, 111-2, 193n.77.
35
In reality the Commission served the interests of pro-opium groups and its final report attempted to “justify
the opium policies of the governments of the United Kingdom, India, and other British colonial holding in
Asia.” Blue, “Opium for China,” 39.
36
Alexander Des Forges, “Opium/Leisure/Shanghai: Urban Economies of Consumption,” in Opium Regimes,
167-85.
37
NCH, 19 January 1894.
38
NCH, 30 March 1894.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 17

silk merchants.”40

The final blow for opium traders came in when 1907 the British government finally

consented to implement a policy of gradual reduction of opium imports to China which

aimed to reach a final demise of the trade in 1917. Though the decision penalised

Baghdadi, Parsi, Ismaili and Persian firms, it also offered fresh opportunities for traders to

speculate on the rising prices of the Indian varieties of opium, which quality was much

more prized than the China-grown product. In Shanghai among individual Baghdadi traders

the real estate tycoon Silas Aaron Hardoon exploited to the full climbing opium prices and

made huge profits on as many as five tons of opium.41 As a group Baghdadi traders

together with Parsi merchants exploited together the reduced availability of Indian opium

by organising in 1913 the Shanghai Opium Merchants' Combine, headed by the Baghdadi

trader E.I. Ezra, which acted as a monopoly for the import of Indian and Persian Opium.

The commodity was then distributed by powerful Chaozhou merchants.42

Once the opium trade became illegal in 1918, Baghdadi Jewish firms, as a whole,

conformed to the new rules and ceased to engage opium dealings.43 Nevertheless a few

individuals, such as the younger brothers of Edward Ezra, Judah and Isaac, were reluctant

to give up what in the past had been a lucrative and legal business. After a series of

commercial misadventures in Shanghai, in the 1920s the two brothers sought better fortune

in San Francisco where they became entangled in a smuggling ring of opium and narcotics

from China to California. In May 1933 both brothers were charged with illegal importation

39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.
41
Yu Bohai. "Hatong" (Hardoon) (unpublished paper, 1990), 4.
42
Brian Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang (Berkeley, 1996),46-7, 49.
43
Throughout 1918, some Baghdadi traders were probably still selling the opium they had accumulated in
the previous decade. In July 1918 a Shanghai merchant, probably British, requested to 1600 pounds of opium
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 18

and sale of narcotics in the United States, thus bringing their families fortunes to an end.44

The Ezras, who like their more prominent brother Edward had been respected merchants in

Shanghai’s foreign settlements in the 1910s, had become dangerous narcotics traffickers in

San Francisco the 1930s. In reality the commodity they dealt with –opium- was always the

same, only circumstances, times and attitudes had changed. With the Ezra case in San

Francisco, the involvement of Baghdadi Jews in the opium trade, which had started to

compete with the Parsis in the 1840s, had come to a full circle. By the time the Ezra

brothers were indicted, opium fortunes that were made legally in Shanghai by Baghdadis as

well as by other foreigners and Chinese had already been reinvested in other lines of trade,

in industrial endeavours or in real estate.

• Business Strategies in the Treaty Port of Shanghai

Altogether we can distinguish between three generations of Baghdadi Jewish firms in

Shanghai. The first generation was represented by the Sassoon firms, which in the decades

between 1845 and the early 1880s set the foundations for the establishment of a permanent

Baghdadi community in Shanghai. The second generation of Baghdadi firms were founded

by ex-Sassoon employees that broke away from the shackles of the Sassoons and started to

operate as individual brokers and general merchants in the 1880s. At the very beginning,

these entrepreneurs were still firmly anchored in Judeao-Arabic culture and did not

necessarily use Western accounting practices as their business records and correspondence

were often kept in Judeao-Arabic, a language, which provided a high degree of secrecy in

from the Hardoon Company. PRO. FO 671/452/212-3. Edward Ezra to Sir Edward [Fraser], 12 July 1918.
Enclosure. Langley [?] to Messrs. S.A. Hardoon, 12 July 1918.
44
“Ezra Brothers under Arrest in U.S.,” NCH, 24 May 1933; “Another Arrest in Ezra Case,” NCH, 14 June
1933; “An Ezra Case Echo,” NCH, 4 October 1933.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 19

commercial dealings. Altogether, is feasible to assume that individual Baghdadi merchants

and brokers stopped using written Judeao-Arabic in the 1890s. 45

As for the third generation of Baghdadi firms, they were founded in the course of

the early twentieth century by Baghdadis who were usually born in Shanghai, had received

a British education, and developed a local identity comparable to that of British settlers.

The structure of these firms was similar to those of the second generation: they were mostly

small family firms engaged in various forms of brokerage and general commerce. We can

surmise that Baghdadi firms of the second and third generations usually functioned on a

rather limited and local scale and never developed into highly sophisticated international

business operations. They often employed relatives and therefore kinship ties and trust were

closely intertwined. Altogether, personal contacts were crucial for Baghdadis in

environment such as the Shanghai Stock Exchange, where they confused their British

competitors by speaking in Judeao-Arabic. Not surprisingly, business partnerships between

Baghdadis and non-Jewish businessmen were extremely rare, two exceptions being the

firms Benjamin & Potts and Toeg & Read, formed by Baghdadi Jewish and British brokers.

Of the two, only Benjamin & Potts represented a successful endeavour and remained a

unique example of long-term commercial co-operation involving Baghdadi Jewish and

British businessmen in Shanghai. 46

We should dispel the assumption that all Baghdadis in Shanghai worked for

established firms. Some owned food or clothing shops, which catered for co-religionists,

other peddled goods, and the poorest solicited alms. As a whole, however, Baghdadi Jews

were exceptionally successful in the Shanghai foreign settlements. Though during they stay

45
See for example ‘Kelly Silas Kelly v. Raphael Sidka Raphael’, NCH, 12 March 1884, 303.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 20

they diversified their commercial activities, much of the wealth they accumulated derived

from opium and land investments. In Shanghai opium profits were often reinvested in real

estate in the city’s foreign settlements which, in constantly troubled China, provided a safe

refuge both as business and residential centres. Being Chinese areas under foreign

administration, the settlements had envisaged a complex system of land tenure, which

secured foreign protection not only to foreign landowners but also to Chinese who

employed foreign trustees. Not surprisingly, land values in these areas underwent a constant

re-evaluation and between 1900 and 1930 properties situated in the most expensive section

of the International Settlement increased their values tenfold. Prices depreciated only once,

in 1910, at the height of the rubber boom.47

Among Baghdadi opium traders the Sassoon firms, especially E.D. Sassoon & Co,.

and Silas Aaron Hardoon heavily invested in real estate. E.D. Sassoon & Co., started to

acquire land in 1877, nine years after opening its Shanghai branch. In the following

decades, the firm continuously expanded its land interests and in 1921 it owned as many as

29 properties in the foreign settlements, for a total of almost 300 mu and a value of over 13

million taels.48 Once Sir Victor Sassoon transferred his base to Shanghai in the late 1920s

he consolidated the firm’s real estate interests and, through a number of family companies,

erected some of Shanghai’s main architectural landmarks such as the Cathay mansions and

the Cathay Hotel, which at its completion in was advertised as “The most modern hotel in

the Far East.”49

46
These comments are based on the consultation of Shanghai’s commercial directories and Shanghai’s
newspapers.
47
Richard Feetham, Report of the Hon. Justice Feetham, C.M.G., to the Shanghai Municipal Council
(Shanghai, 1931), 1: 328-9, 338, 342-3.
48
For the only complete overview of E.D. Sassoon & Co. real estate dealings see Zhang, Shaxun jituan, 33-
62.
49
”Modern Shanghai. Jewish Contributions IV,” Israel’s Messenger (hereafter quoted as IM), 5 April 1929.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 21

Silas Aaron Hardoon epitomised the commercial achievements of individual

Baghdadis who reached Shanghai as employees of the Sassoon firms. Born in Ottoman

Baghdad in 1851, he moved as a child to Bombay where, as an adolescent, he found

employment at D. Sassoon, Sons & Co., and was send to work in the Hong Kong branch.

After moving to Shanghai in 1874 he first worked for D. Sassoon, Sons & Co. and then for

E .D. Sassoon, & Co. In 1900, whilst serving as general manager of E. D. Sassoon, & Co.,

he founded his own company that acted, for some years, as agent for the British America

Assurance Co., imported opium and, most importantly, dealt in real estate. Hardoon’s land

dealings, which are kept in Shanghai, provide precious insights on how he operated in the

real estate market. Hardoon, like other Shanghai land dealers, often mortgaged properties to
50
raise cash to finance further real estate purchases. As for E.D. Sassoon & Co. it loaned

cash on the security of properties. The mortgage money amounted to about 30-40% of the

property, with yearly interest starting from 7 and a half and 8%. When small and medium

landowners were not able to repay the loan, the property was re-possessed by E.D. Sassoon

& Co.51

Hardoon’s most valuable properties were situated on Nanking Road, China’s most

fashionable shopping venue, the epitome of Shanghai’s distinctive urban and commercial

culture. Hardoon’s land along the road was leased to commercial ventures such as the

Wingon and Sincere department stores, which had brought to Shanghai new and

revolutionary shopping practices. In less valuable areas Hardoon built cheap housing,

usually in lilong (alleys which represented a prominent feature of Shanghai’s hybrid

50
These remarks are based on the consultation of the Hardoon archives which are kept in the Shanghai House
Property Administration Bureau Archives. Chiara Betta, "Silas Aaron Hardoon (1851?-1931): “Marginality
and Adaptation in Shanghai, " (London, 1997), 112-27.
51
Zhang, Shaxun jituan, 38.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 22

architecture) and rented them out expensively to Chinese tenants. At the time of his death in

1931 Hardoon owned 450 mu of land and approximately 1200 buildings and was without

any doubt Shanghai’s most successful Baghdadi real estate tycoon.52

It should not be overlooked that other Baghdadi merchants played a prominent role

in the rise of a modern real estate market in the city’s foreign settlements. Especially

towards the end of the 1920s Baghdadis heavily invested in real estate ventures. The

Somekh, Elias and Toeg families spent enormous amount of money to erect expensive and

fashionable residential housing which boasted the most up-to-date appliances and the latest

architectural styles and contributed to give a Western shape to Shanghai’s skies. 53

Yet, two decades later the Baghdadi stay in the city came to an abrupt end: in May

1949 Communist troops entered Shanghai and in the following years most foreigners left

the city. During the Maoist era, Shanghai, on the basis of its capitalist past, was heavily

penalised compared to other mainland cities. The city’s landscape was consciously

neglected and Western buildings, such as those erected by Baghdadi Jews, were left in a

decrepit state, as a reminder of a bygone era. The rehabilitation of Shanghai as a

commercial hub at the beginning of the nineties has fuelled a frenzied real estate boom: old

buildings have been re-placed by towering skyscrapers, which assert Shanghai’s present

determination to re-invent itself as a leading financial and commercial hub in the global

world at the beginning of the third millennium.

To conclude, this paper has stressed that the Baghdadi settlement in Shanghai needs to be

assessed as part of the intertwining Baghdadi Jewish networks which blossomed under the

52
Betta, “Hardoon”, 112-27.
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 23

aegis of the British empire from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. Baghdadi

Jews were traditional merchants from the Ottoman empire who adopted Western

commercial practices, underwent a strong process of Anglicisation, but nevertheless

maintained a strong attachment to their Baghdadi heritage and trusted only co-religionists

of similar extraction. In Shanghai, the Sassoon firms as well as smaller companies

employed only Baghdadi co-religionists thus creating close-knit commercial ties -

impenetrable even to Ashkenazi Jews- that were largely based on personal relations. In this

respect, the Baghdadi diaspora maintained many traits of historical diasporas and could be

compared to its Parsi, Greek, Armenian and Chinese counterparts. As much as guanxi, a

complex set of personal relationships, played and still play a crucial role among Chinese

engaged in business; kinship and personal ties based on a shared Baghdadi Jewish culture

defined the business strategies of Baghdadi Jews of the diaspora.

On one level, as a middlemen minority, Baghdadi Jews specialised in the import to

China of opium and cotton yarn and probably also in the export of Chinese gold bullion to

India. In this respect, it cannot be overlooked that they shared similar functional niches with

other minority trading groups based in Bombay, especially Parsis and Gujarati Muslims,

and also Persians. On another level, as settlers in the Shanghai foreign settlements,

Baghdadi Jews took part in the private enterprise capitalism which characterised the modus

operandi of British entrepreneurs in China’s treaty ports. They thus became heavily

involved in developing a modern real estate market in Shanghai and amassed huge fortunes

by investing in land, especially in the central areas of the International Settlement. Their

close commercial ties with the local British oligarchy made Baghdadi Jews more politically

53
“Modern Shanghai. Jewish Contributions, III,” IM, 4 January, 1929, 4; “Modern Shanghai. Jewish
Contributions VII,” IM, 7 February 1930; “Rivers Court Apartment for Mrs. R-E. Toeg,” IM, 4 July 1930, 12;
 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 24

powerful than in former colonial environments, something which should not be overlooked

in any analysis of the history of Baghdadi Jews. In a few words, in the opium trade

Baghdadi Jews acted in co-operation/competition with other middleman minorities; in the

real estate business they exploited the ambiguities of the treaty port system and became

firm allies of Shanghai’s British settlers. As a whole, Baghdadi Jewish traders in Shanghai

manifested a great flexibility in adapting to local circumstances, something which

undoubtedly favoured their remarkable commercial achievements

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES
I. ARCHIVAL MATERIAL
• London. Public Record Office.
FO 372. Foreign Office General Correspondence, Treaty.
FO 671. Shanghai Correspondence, 1845-1948.
• Shanghai. Shanghai House Property Administration Bureau Archives. Archives of
the Hardoon Company.

II. NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES

Celestial Empire. Weekly edition of the Shanghai Mercury, 1891.
Israel’s Messenger, 1929-1931
North China Herald, weekly edition of the North China Daily News. 1850-1931.
Shenbao, March 1911.

III. CONTEMPORARY REPORTAGE

Wright, Arnold, ed. Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Other
Treaty Ports in China: Their History, People, Commerce, Industries, and
Resources. London: Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Company, 1908.
IV. CONTEMPORARY DIRECTORIES, GUIDES,
Anglo-Chinese Calendar for the Year 1848. Canton: Chinese Repository, 1848.
Directory for 1887 (incomplete reference).

“Modern Shanghai. Jewish Contributions, IX,” IM, 2 January 1931, 4.

 Chiara Betta. FIRST DRAFT, DO NOT QUOTE 25

The Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan, & the Philippines for the Year 1868. Hong
Kong: Daily Press Office, 1868.
The Comacrib Directory of China, 1928. Shanghai, 1928.
The Directory & Chronicle for China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, Straits Settlements,
Malay States, Siam, Netherlands’s India, Borneo, the Philippines & C. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong Daily Press Office. 1906, 1909, 1910, 1919 and 1920 editions.
The Hongkong Almanack and Directory for 1846, with an Appendix. Hong Kong: China
Mail, 1846.

V. RECOLLECTIONS, MEMOIRS
Cohen, Israel. A Jewish Pilgrimage: The Autobiography of Israel Cohen. London:
Vallentine, Mitchell, 1956.
Cohen, Israel. The Journal of a Jewish Traveller. London: John Lane, 1925.
Dyce, Charles M. Personal Reminiscences of Thirty Years' Residence in the Model
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Jacob. b. Abraham d. Sudea, letter [1895]. In Mollendorf, von P.G. "Die Juden in China"
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VI. OFFICIAL PAPERS, PUBLISHED

Feetham, Richard. Report of the Hon. Justice Feetham, C.M.G., to the Shanghai Municipal
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