Little Known History: The Last Kings of Shanghai Book Review
By Jesse Nuese
The Last Kings of Shanghai tells the fascinating tale of two Jewish families from Baghdad, the Kadoories and the Sassoons, and how they built business empires in China that surfed the momentous events of the 19th and early 20th-century history.
When they arrived in China, the two families already ran expansive business empires that stretched from Baghdad to Britain to India. Eventually, they found their way to East Asia, where they would help shape the cities they settled in. They ran a Jewish refugee camp in Shanghai during World War II, charmed political elites, and built enormous fortunes while contributing to early forms of globalization and profiting off Chinese labor. The Sassoons built opulent hotels that still grace Shanghai’s Bund today, while the Kadoories built a power station that kept the lights on in large swathes of Hong Kong. Victor Sassoon threw lavish, Gatsby-style parties at his hotel in Shanghai during the 1920s, and then later, after Kristallnacht, immediately moved to convert his luxury skyscrapers into reception centers for refugees fleeing Europe.
Author Jonathan Kaufman describes decades of Jewish influence on the international business community in Shanghai in rich, historical detail. Embodying both the growing international wealth of Shanghai, as well as the outside forces that built fortunes off the backs of Chinese workers, the two families survived the Opium Wars, Japanese occupation, and street violence between the Nationalists and the Communists. What results is a unique, fascinating story of the Jews in the diaspora, navigating the rolling tide of history and finding a home in what some would consider the most unexpected of places: China.