The winds of change and the end of the Comprador System in the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation

Abstract

There was a marked shift in attitudes towards racial and ethnic discrimination in the capitalist world in the 1960s. In Britain and other Western democracies, workplace discrimination became both illegal and socially unacceptable in the years around 1965. At about the same time, decolonisation accelerated. This article will show how the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation responded to this changing environment by reforming the way it treated non-British workers in Asian markets. Prior to the 1960s, workers had been assigned to ethnic layers, with ethnic Chinese individuals occupying the lowest group and British expatriates filling all executive posts. In the 1960s, this system was scrapped in favour of a less discriminatory one. This article, which is based on research in the company's archive as well as other primary sources, will explore how the bank shed the cultural and institutional legacies of colonialism, which included the so-called comprador system.