David Sassoon & Co.
David Sassoon & Co., Ltd. was a trading house operating in late 19th century and early 20th century China.
Established 1832 in Bombay (today Mumbai) by David Sassoon, a Baghdadi Jewish businessman in Bombay. The company specialised in trading Indian cotton yarn and opium from Bombay to Canton (China). It had branches at Calcutta, Shanghai, Canton, and Hongkong and its business extended as far as Yokohama, Nagasaki and other cities in Japan. In 1872 David Sassoon & Co moved its head office from Bombay to London.[1]
In 1875, the company built the Sassoon Docks, the first commercial wet docks in Mumbai which helped establishing cotton trade. Later on the business expanded to act as Hong Kong agents for the Apcar Line, a company which operated steamers plying between Calcutta–Hong Kong and Japan–Shanghai. The firm also acquired property in Hong Kong.[2]
David Sassoon's son Sir Albert Sassoon, Bart. succeeded his father and subsequently passed the business on to Sir Edward Sassoon, Bart., M.P..[2]
See also
References
- ^ Geoffrey Jones: ″Merchants to Multinationals - British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries″, Oxford University PressOxford 2007, p.51, ISBN 978-0-19-829450-4
- ^ a b Wright, Arnold (1908). Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong-Kong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China. London: Lloyd's Greater Britain Pub. Co. p. 224.