The rival Jewish Dynasties that helped Create Modern China 15/3/22
587 BC The fall of the first Temple and the exile of Jews to Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar.
1489 a stone marked of the Jews of Kaifeng.
1829 David Sassoon forced to flee Bagdad and set up in Bushire.
1864 with David's death most of his son's moved to London. Elias Sassoon ran the business in Shanghai
1850 Taiping rebellion virtual civil war.
1891 British Parliament legislates ending the opium trade
1894 Japan begins to attack China.
1895 Shanghai had a modern tram system and gas works that rivaled London and was the 4th largest city in the world.
1905Takahashi met Jacob Schiff of KuhnLoeb and Co.just after the Kishinev pogroms Shift gave him loans to build a navy against Russia.
1908 Model T ford that needed rubber for tyres
1909 International conference in Shanghai banning the opium trade.
1911 Wuchang revolutionary groups organize uprising. The Qing dynasty collapsed bringing the Chinese Republic.
1924 the Kadoories moved into China led by Sir Lawrence Kadoorie.
1925 SunYat-sen died of cancer and Chiang Kai-shek became China's leader.
1927 Chou Enlai launched an armed communist uprising that was put down and 12 Communist's were executed with an anticommunism campaign that killed 300,000.
1934 Mao's Long March
1937 Japan's massacre of Nanking. The British ambassador and Victor Sassoon named enemies of Japan.
1938Victor Sassoon started preparing for Jewish refugees and purchased big tracks of land in Brazil as an investment
1939 10,000 refugees in Shanghai, and the American Joint Distribution Committee sent money. Diseases like Diphtheria scarlet fever, tuberculosis , measles and typhoid were appearing
1940 700 students enrolled in the Kadoories school in Shanghai
1940 Sept Japan joined the Axis powers. The Germans asked for a list of German Jews in Shanghai
1941 Autumn Victory Sassoon left Shanghai for India as he knew he would be arrested by the Japanese
1949 The year the communists seized power. The Kadoories partnered with Chinese factory owners to bring electricity to those fleeing the communists in Hong Kong
1976 Mao Zedong died he was born in 1893 In was in the freedom of the foreign colony that he set up the communist party
Deng Xiaoping became ruler
1979 The US established relations with China, Nixon's visit and the writer was a reporter.
1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
2014 the Cathey Hotel was restored and a call was made for memorabilia of the past glory hundreds responded with all sorts of things like embossed dishes, photos etc.
___________________________________________
In 200 years living in China none of the Sassoon's bothered to learn Chinese.
These 2 families set up offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bombay and London from where they ruled global economy.
David Sassoon sent his sons to China while their wives remained in Bombay and he hired tutors to teach them. Civil wars in the countryside drove Chinese to seek refuge in the International settlement.
1870 the Sassoons controlled 70% of the trade in opium flowing into China. Siegfried Sassoon the poet became estranged from his family over this.
When Baghdadis heard of the Sassoon's success they flocked to join them.
Elly Sassoon when bubonic plague broke out he distributed disinfected on credit to control it, so he broke away and started his own firm in 1891aged 25 under the alias ES Kelly. He married Laura who travelled with him; she was not prepared to just be a housewife. Hong Kong was a crown colony more British than the British. By 1901 he proudly named the firm Elly Kadourie. They built a school in Baghdad for girls. The brother Ellis opened a school in Hong Kong for girls teaching them arithmetic and Chinese and English.
Unlike insular China Japan sent scholars to the west to learn.
Laura was on the ship going to the US that had Japanese officials going to the peace conference under Teddy Roosevelt to end the Russo Japanese War.
1908 Elly Sassoon invested in rubber in Malaysia as cars were now being manufactured. When cars became available in China Laura was one of the first women do drive one
1909 Elly became the leader of the Zionist movement in China and got Sun Yat-sens support for the Belfour Declaration. Morris Cohen (2 gun Cohen was Sun's head of security.
Elly tried getting British citizenship citing his British wife and children had been educated at British boarding schools. He finally got this in 1926with a knighthood from George V. They visited Japan and a6 weeks later a fire broke out in their home and Laura died.
1920s 40,000 foreigners lived in Shanghai, half of China's new factories were started by Chinese businessmen in Shanghai. The settlement was a haven for political radicals including the communist party. There were many Chinese language daily , weekly and monthly papers published. Joseph Stillwell was amazed at Shanghai; he later became US soldier who played a pivotal role in China relations.
Elly Sassoon welcomed people to his house Marble Hall including Charles Lindberg and Katherine Stringson the first woman to fly there from England. Hollywood celebrities visited Shanghai - Douglas Fairbanks and wife Mary Pickford. Christopher Isherwood and WH Auden visited.
At Kadoorie's Majestic hotel the wedding of Chaing Kai shek to Sun's younger sister , wedding of the century
1934 Mao's Long March resulted in the Nationalists nationalizing the banks and all silver deposits were to be exchanged for paper. Thus the Nationalists controlled the loans that could be given out and the ability of foreigners like Victor to move money in and out.
50 years of communism had put China through revolution, famine and a Cultural Revolution.
1938Victor Sassoon started preparing for Jewish refugees and purchased big tracts of land in Brazil as an investment but Brazil would not allow the entry of Jews. Ho Feng -Shan the Chinese ambassador to Vienna who spoke German saw that Jews could not get visas and issued transit visas to them. China at this time was buying arms from Germany. Many used the visas to get out of Austria and went to the US Palestine or Philippines. These people bought tickets through Switzerland to Naples and bought tickets on the Conte Biancamano to Shanghai.
1905Takahashi met Jacob Schiff of Kuhn Loeb and Co. just after the Kishinev pogroms he gave him loans to build a navy against Russia. Takahashi later became finance minister and then premier of Japan.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was printed in Russia in 1903, Henry Ford later sponsored printing 500,000 copies in 1920.
Inuzuka directed that Jews living in Shanghai should be treated fairly as other foreign nationals. Later on when he was arrested to be tried as a war criminal Shanghai and Manchuria Jews stepped forward to protect him.
1941 May Laura Margolis, an American woman, was sent by the Joint and during the war money came to support the refugees. She was later sent back to the US in a prisoner exchange Sept 1943
1941 before the Japanese occupation Hong Kong had a population of 1.25 million by wars end it had shrunk to 600,000
1942 The SS Colonel Josef Meising the Butcher of Warsaw came to Shanghai to execute the Jews but the Japanese would not allow this as they considered them valuable hostages.
At the end of the war American General Albert Wedemeyer, the commander of China, moved into Victor Sassoon suit in the Cathey Hotel. The US aid to Chiang Kai-shek was siphoned off by corrupt Nationalist officials.
At wars end in Hong Kong Laurences assets were safe and became a boom town with more than 10,000 refugees a month pouring in.
In Hong Kong Horace set up The Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association before the model of microloans was known. Hong Kong had to prevent rogue troops of the Red Guards from entering.
1950 Shanghai Factories were producing half China's GDP.
In 1954 Laurence Kadoorie acknowledged that the fight to save Marble Hall was over and agreed to donate it to Madame SunYetsen for her children's fund.
Mao's Great |Leap Forward produced widespread famine. In a conflict between Mao and other leaders in China, Mao decided to strike back with the Cultural Revolution and he chose Shanghai as his headquarters.
1970's by this time Hong Kong had a per capita income 10X that of China and Lawrence boasted that he had 10% of its economy.
1972 In the thaw with Deng Xiaoping. Rong Yiren was a partner of the Kadoories who fled to Hong Kong from Shanghai as well as Madam SunYatsun so they now had 2 friends in Beijing. Now that China was opening up, the Kadoories were a bridge to the west.
1979 The US treasury secretary Michael Blumenthal stunned officials in Beijing when he spoke Chinese with a Shanghai dialect. He had been at the Kadoorie school and went back to see his old house there.
Michael Medavoy, a Hollywood executive announced he wanted to make a movie on the Shanghai refugees.
Shaul Eisenberg, the billionaire head of Israel arms dealing, also came from Shanghai during the war.
The Shanghai refugee museum has a panel devoted to Ho Feng-Shan as well as an exhibit on the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara.
1981 Lawrence was made Baron Kadoories of Kowloon by Queen Elizabeth.
Today the Kadoories are worth $11billion
