The Hongkong Bank in Singapore: 1877–1902: The First 25 Years

Singapore, December 1877. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation opens for business in a city where reliable currency is
scarce, silver is steadily losing value against sterling, and much of
commerce rests on trust and reputation.

This book traces the branch’s first 25 years: its day-to-day work
financing trade and managing exchange, its pursuit of the right to
issue bank notes, and the occasional crises, from a banknote forgery
to the theft of $272,000 from the bank’s vault.

For author R.E. Hale, the story lies in the people. Nine managers
passed through in this period, each navigating a different combination
of market conditions and head office expectations, with varying
degrees of success. Working alongside the British staff were the long-serving

Eurasian clerks, and the Compradore’s department, which
managed cash and mediated relationships with local Chinese
merchants. Beyond the bank, the Chettiar money-lenders were
indispensable to local credit, and their promissory notes proved a
recurring and costly temptation to the branch.

Drawing on bank archives and the contemporary Singapore press, this
is a detailed account of how a single branch functioned within the
structures of colonial trade – and of the working lives that sustained it.