HSBC until 1950: From its colonial cradle past the World Wars

TL;DR

This paper explores HSBC's origins in colonial China, highlighting its early profits from opium trade, its resilience through wars and geopolitical upheavals, and its ongoing silence on its tainted past.

Contribution

It uncovers HSBC's colonial and unethical origins, analyzing how historical profits and strategic resilience contributed to its growth and survival until 1950.

Findings

HSBC's founding was linked to opium trade profits.

The bank's global diversification helped it survive wars.

HSBC has not acknowledged or apologized for its colonial past.

Abstract

Europe's largest bank by assets as of 2025 started out in the 1860s in one of Europe's colonies: The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Co (HSBC). Multiple wars forced Qing China and later the young Republic of China into a series of unequal treaties, one of which was the forced legalisation of the opium trade from parts of the British Empire into China, another was opening several cities, including Shanghai, for trade and granting extensive civil, property and business rights to non-residents and yet another was the annexation of Hong Kong by the United Kingdom. These are the conditions that created HSBC and in which it thrived, including from opium-related profits. During periods of relative calm, the bank grew geographically and made profits -- whether in moral or unethical, whether in legal or unlawful ways -- which helped HSBC weather the storms of civil and world wars. Other aspects contributed to HSBC's survival and success, such as its global nature, which allowed it to diversify and shift away from regions when danger emerges there and find shelter in safer havens. Yet the resilient survival abilities and the financial success of HSBC until 1950 should not distract from the fact that in addition to its tainted cradle and early profits from facilitating the poisoning of a whole society, its human resource system was also discrimination based, attempting to divide the one human race into different groups -- in spite of such practises being opposed to medical and biological facts. What is particularly interesting to see is that not only has HSBC yet to apologise for the early drug-related blood money it made: it even fails to mention its colonial, drug profits tainted past on any of its many history-themed pages sighted. Later sections contain possible reasons for HSBC's resilience and success, particularly interesting for entrepreneurs.