Setting the Stage

The reason David Sassoon could remain so calm while fleeing was that his fortune had long since been shifted to the Far East, leaving him with nothing to fear.

As for his properties in Mumbai, he believed they could be recovered sooner or later; after all, the uprising was the work of Anglo-Indians, and what did that have to do with the Sassoon family?

At the very worst, he still had the support of Hong Kong Governor John Francis Davis. The Sassoon family would surely be granted asylum, and once he leveraged his connections in London, it would be easy enough to topple a greenhorn like Henry Hardinge.

John Francis Davis was known as "the most unpopular governor in history," though in reality, Henry Pottinger had left his successor a complete mess.

When Davis took over, the Hong Kong region was practically lawless—filthy, violent, and devoid of any semblance of order.

There were no household registrations, the population was highly transient, and the customs house was a mere formality. People could commit murder on the island and stroll away brazenly, leaving the British constables powerless once they finally discovered the crime.

However, these issues rarely threatened the interests of the British elite, as most of them lived in large houses protected by bodyguards.

The biggest problem Davis faced was the most common one in any colony: expenditures exceeding revenue, requiring massive annual injections of capital from the British government.

Yet, according to British estimates, while the costs of building and maintaining Hong Kong were enormous, the revenue should theoretically have been much higher.

It should have at least reached the level of Austrian East Africa or Austrian Chenla. The reality, however, was that Hong Kong's revenue at the time was only a tenth of the former and a fraction of