Elias David Sassoon

Elias David Sassoon (March 27, 1820 Baghdad , † March 21, 1880 Colombo ) was a British - Chinese merchant .

Baghdad / India

As the second eldest son of the Jewish merchant David Sassoon , Elias grew up in Baghdad. Together with his father, he fled to Bombay via Persia in 1833 as a result of anti-Semitic attacks by the Ottoman government . In 1840 he married Leah Gubbay .

China

After China had been forced to largely open up to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, Elias Sassoon went to Hong Kong for his father's trading house in 1844 and finally settled in Shanghai in 1850 . There he was primarily involved in the wool trade and in particular opened up the high-demand markets of the climatically cold northern China. Later he shifted increasingly to the lucrative opium trade .

In 1867 Sassoon founded his own trading company, Elias David Sassoon & Co. , which soon grew into serious competition for his father's company. Like him, Elias was also active as a patron and built synagogues and schools for his employees even at the most remote outposts of his soon-to-be global empire .

See also: Sassoon family