The Sassoon family was and remains legendary in global business and social history, with Victor Sassoon as its most iconic figure. He embodied the spirit of the cosmopolitan elite in the early 20th century, maintaining residences and businesses across the major financial centers of his time, dividing his life between Bombay, London, and Shanghai. As a financier, he operated worldwide, skillfully navigating the complex networks of empire and commerce that defined his era.
Rosemary Wakeman’s The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918-1941 is not another conventional biography of the Sassoon family. Instead, it offers a study of the history of urbanization and global commerce, in which the Sassoon story becomes a vehicle to explore the historical and economic forces shaping these cities. Wakeman dedicates two chapters to each city—beginning with Bombay, then London, and finally Shanghai—examining how each responded to the intensifying pressures of global trade.
While Wakeman traces the footprints and influences of the Sassoon business in each city, I see the book’s true focus as uncovering how each place grappled with an early model of what I identify as the “crisis of cosmopolitanism.” This crisis, born of modernity and global capitalism, stems from cosmopolitanism’s promise of connectivity and progress. Yet it frequently falls short in practice, leading instead to individual alienation and the erosion of core human values such as empathy and belonging. Against a backdrop of wars and famine, exile and refuge, colonialism and revolution, Wakeman presents not only the extravagant luxuries enjoyed by each city’s elites but also paints a more diverse picture that extends beyond champagne-filled banquets and exclusive yacht clubs; she also dives into what sustains such luxury—the harsh labor conditions, increasing social unrest, and cross-cultural tensions that were foundational to global capitalism. Through this lens, Wakeman writes an urban world history, showing us how pursuing a cosmopolitan community in this era ultimately built a global network of banking that prioritized profit over human welfare.
The book is, in many ways, an invitation to revisit the history of capitalism and offers a closer view of how personal and national empires are constructed. By delving into the nuanced, sometimes painful intersections that characterized Sassoon’s adopted cities, Bombay, London, and Shanghai each came to life as unique characters. They each shaped Sassoon’s life and legacy differently, contributing to the complex formation of cosmopolitanism in the first half of the 20th century. The turmoil of its time left a profound impact not only on the residents but on the cities themselves. In Shanghai, for example, the Sassoons owned key businesses and enjoyed a glamorous existence, with the Cathay Hotel (now the contemporary Peace Hotel) as the landmark and symbol of their power at the corner of the Bund. Yet this vantage point also exposes the privileged to face the simmering labor conflicts and colonial inequalities visible on the bustling streets of Nanjing Road. Wakeman’s ability to connect the grandeur sight of the empire built on global capital to the systemic disparities that fueled its rise makes her narrative both compelling and multidirectional.
What could have complemented Wakeman’s detailed and engaging portrayal is an extension of the description of the paradoxes of the early cosmopolitan cities to the Sasson family’s paradoxical and nuanced human values. Victor Sassoon’s transformation of the family fortune into a financial empire reflects his role in global commerce, but the duality of his legacy is striking. Born into wealth that originated from ethically fraught practices in the opium trade, Victor Sassoon also displayed compassion, providing critical funds dedicated to the refuge of approximately 20,000 stateless Jews in Shanghai during the Second World War. His capital supported the operation of the Heime (the German word for Home, indicating soup kitchen and refugee shelter), which became lifelines for stateless refugees, embodying both the moral ambiguities of his empire and an undeniable genuine philanthropic spirit.
This aspect of the Sassoon family’s history in Shanghai, deeply intertwined with Jewish refugee relief efforts, is barely mentioned, though it might have added an essential dimension to Wakeman’s narrative. For a man like Sassoon, whose wealth aided displaced Jews, the omission of his role in the refugee crisis overlooks an opportunity to explore the paradoxes within cosmopolitanism itself. Was his humanitarianism a calculated effort to stabilize Shanghai’s economy for his empire or a heartfelt response to human suffering? This remains an open question, yet it’s one that enriches the sophistication of his character and legacy.
The Worlds of Victor Sassoon invites readers to reflect on the enduring dynamics of cosmopolitanism and capitalism. Wakeman captures the allure and contradictions of a cosmopolitan era that promised interconnectedness but often deepened inequalities. In a time when globalization and nationalism are again under scrutiny, her work feels especially relevant. By reminding us how fragile the cosmopolitan ideal can be, Wakeman illuminates the thin line between unity and division. Her exploration resonates deeply in an era when the ideals of interconnected progress are once again tested by the forces of economic disparity and political polarization—a timely reflection on cosmopolitanism’s crises and dualities that rendered figures like Victor Sassoon both visionary and flawed.