People · silk merchant, French Municipal Council chairman
Buissonnet
皮少耐Píshàonài · d. 1870
French silk exporter who came to Shanghai in 1854, founded the French Concession volunteer corps in 1862 and chaired the first French Municipal Council.
Buissonnet (皮少耐, Píshàonài) was a French silk exporter and an early civic leader of the French Concession. The gazetteer records him as the concession’s most influential silk merchant.
He came to Shanghai in April 1854 as the agent of a firm from the Drome region and soon founded his own house, which exported silk. By the gazetteer’s account its yearly turnover reached 9 million francs, and he owned land in the French Concession worth 200,000 to 250,000 francs.
His public roles were as important as his business. In 1862, when the Taiping armies threatened Shanghai, he helped set up the French Concession’s volunteer corps and became its captain. He served the first two terms as chairman of the French Municipal Council, and for eight years he sat as an assessor at the concession’s Mixed Court. He left for France in 1870, ill, and died that year. His book was titled La richesse protegee. A road in the concession carried his name.