ABSTRACT
Mr. Hardoon was loved and hated, cursed and praised, but few people knew him well. Few understood his many eccentricities. Mr. Hardoon was a symbol of the white man's position in the Far East, however his life deserves some setting down. His life taught no lesson and pointed no moral. Mr Hardoon was individualistic if nothing else. Shanghai, a middle-size commercial centre situated in the sophisticated and commercialised Jiangnan area, was officially opened to trade with Great Britain by the treaty of Nanjing signed at the end of the Opium War in 1842. In the following years, as a result of its newly acquired status of treaty port and under the impulse of growing trade with foreign countries, the town experienced exceptional demographic growth and underwent a dramatic economic transformation. The latter generally arrived in China via Bombay and Calcutta as employees of the powerful Sassoon houses.
