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Asia, Maurice Collis |
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Maurice Collis - commissioned by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation HSBC presents a fascinating insight into the
minds and actions of the earliest Europeans to have come to
Asia on a Business mission.
Pls. note only this cover is in not so
good conditions, everything in the e-book is in perfect
condition. Actually it´s better than new printed. |
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The preface of the book,
page 12
Preface
IN 1961 THE MANAGEMENT OF THE HONGKONG AND SHANGHAI
BANKING CORPORATION commissioned me to write their Bank’s history, the
publication to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of its foundation
in March 1965. To enable me to accomplish this task, a quantity of the
Bank’s records were placed at my disposal and are my authority for what
I have written. The historical background into which the Bank’s story is
fitted is drawn from the very numerous works treating of events in the
Far East, the titles of the most important of which are mentioned in
footnotes.
The Bank’s records did not exist as a corpus of documents or archives,
which could be investigated by me in the ordinary way of research. Some
ten years ago Mr J. R. Jones, who has long been associated with the Bank
in a legal capacity, began to collect information of all sorts relating
to it, such as balance sheets, correspondence, reports, statements of
policy, photographs, biographies of leading managers, anecdotes, maps
and the like, with a view to a history. What he found he arranged with
explanatory notes, which contained also transcrip¬tions of documents. It
is on the Jones papers, as this mass of sorted material may be termed,
that this book rests. Many living persons, too numerous to mention by
name, assisted Mr Jones in his researches and later have supplied me
with some additional information. To them I wish to express on behalf of
the Bank its grateful thanks, to which I beg to add my own.
Though the facts supplied to me might have justified an economic or
financial approach, such was not the desire of the Bank’s management,
whose intention was that I should produce a work with the general appeal
suitable for a centenary volume. Such then has been my endeavour
throughout. The subject lends itself admirably to a treatment of this
kind, because the operations of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation have been intimately linked with the history of the Far
East, which during the last hundred years has been dramatic to a degree
and surprising, eventuating as it has in the complete transformation of
those regions of the world, a more drastic revolution than has ever
previously been recorded of any place. As a rule the story of a bank is
like that of, say, a
regiment or an institution and of interest mainly to its members. Not so
that of the Hongkong Bank which is not only interwoven with the leading
events of its time, but actually throws additional light on them. On
occasion the odds seemed against the Bank’s survival, but no matter the
crisis in public affairs, it managed to win through and emerge with
increased resources and enhanced reputation, until today its 140
branches span the globe and its assets exceed six hundred million
sterling.
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As my theme is to
show the Bank against the background of Asian
politics, its activities at the centre of the
historical dynamic, which lay in China and
Japan, must necessarily take precedence over
those on the periphery. How China and Japan
reacted to the incursion of the West determined
the future of all other Far Eastern territories.
Malaya and Singapore, for instance, were outside
the matrix. |
For that reason it has
been impossible to give a full account of the Bank’s branches in these
territories. What happened there contributed materially to the Bank’s
well-being, but did not determine its destiny. The same is true of Indo
China, Indonesia, Burma and the Philippines. Each had its peculiarities,
but their future was shaped by what took place at the hub of the Asian
system, where the main conflagration was taking place, the clash between
East and West, out of which was born a new Asia.
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WAYFOONG by
Maurice Collis
The Story of the Hongkong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation |
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