Rosemary Wakeman’s new book, The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941, is an interpretative history of global urbanity following the life of business tycoon Victor Sassoon across three cities at the forefront of the sweeping changes taking the world by storm as it entered an era of globalized commerce. Global Urban History blog associate editor Maytal Mark spoke with the author about her process and the direction of global urban history.
Maytal Mark (MM): Can you talk a bit about how you developed the concept for this book? How did you come to base it around Sassoon’s financial enterprises and these three cities?
Rosemary Wakeman (RW): I first came upon Victor Sassoon working on the Practicing Utopia new towns project. He was an outsized figure in Bombay and Shanghai and a perfect entrance into the global elites that had so much influence over urban development. Rather than focusing on how planners and architects fashioned cities, I wanted to know more about the role global capitalism played in urban development in the 1920s and 1930s. I was also fascinated by this financial jet-set that seemed to be everywhere in Bombay, London, and Shanghai. Sassoon and his glitterati were also a way to tie the imperial capital of London together with two of the most important cities globally: one the largest city in the British Empire and the other a semi-colonial British dependency. These were windows into modernity and how it played out beyond the West.
MM: In your 2017 interview for this blog you spoke about moving beyond the case study model in urban history to be able to engage with novel theorizations in urban studies. How did this factor, if at all, into your approach to The Worlds of Victor Sassoon?
RW: Focusing on three cities and the ties between them was an opportunity to move away from the case study model. Instead, I tried to understand the myriad global networks that existed not only between the metropole and colony, but also the dense circuitry that existed between cities that were often imagined erroneously as peripheries. One question was how “modernity” in all its postures and semblances became a global connective tissue between cities, and how it was adopted locally. Another was the intersection between empire and mass culture, and how that was carried across the waves in the age of steam. Still another was what the capitalist oligarchy looked like in the 1920s and 1930s, what role did they play in urban life. These were exciting questions that opened the possibility of novel approaches to urban history.
MM: This book really brings the social and cultural elements of globalization into focus along with its economic features, showing how these connections created a common urban idiom found among the new middle classes as well as the “carriers of capital” like Victor Sassoon. How did you balance this with your discussion of the inherent unevenness of globalization?
RW: Two main tasks were important in this research. First, was to reintegrate economic history-especially banking and trade-back into urban history. Urban economic culture has suffered from a surfeit of interest by urban historians. Richard Harris and Alexia Yates have called for more attention to this arena of research. Sassoon was a way not only to capture the economic whirlwind that spun around these three cities, but to connect global capitalist elites to urban culture. They played at the summit of urban society and had an enormous impact on the materiality of cities as well as its life. Secondly, globalization has a history. Its temporality was at stake in this book- something I spent much time pondering. Focusing on these three cities made it clear that globalization was in full swing even in the turbulent years of the 1920s and 1930s. It also allowed me to reflect on the relationship between empire and the global cross-currents we associate with the contemporary world.
The contradictions, the unevenness of globalization also made London, Shanghai, and Bombay into landscapes of extraordinary volatility. I tried to capture the ethnic and social tensions—many of which were shared and communicated between these three places— in the consequences of Sassoon’s industrial and financial dealings. The inequities and social disparities were explosive, and eventually brought down the Sassoon empire.
MM: Can you tell us about your current and future research projects? What can we expect from you next?
RW: I am currently working on a book on “global urban history” in the second half of the 20th century for Routledge. An enormous topic. I am hoping to whittle it down to an intellectual history. We will see.
