Antonin Besse

Sir Antonin Besse KBE (1877-1951) was a French-born businessman based in Aden, where he spent most of his adult life. St Antony's College, Oxford was established in 1950 as a result of a large donation he made to the university.

Antonin Besse was born in June 1877 in Carcassonne, France. After his father died, Antonin, then 7, moved to Montpelier with the rest of his family including six brothers. He was not academically-inclined and this might have prompted him to enlist in the army when he was 18, where he stayed until he was 22.

Besse then started looking for work and signed a 3-year contract to work as a clerk for Bardey et Cie (Bardey & Co.), an Aden-based French trading house that exported coffee from Yemen. Being penniless, he borrowed money from his brother-in-law to buy tropical clothing as well as his passage to Aden. He left Marseille on a steamer bound for Aden in April 1899.

Besse worked very hard at Bardey & Co., often waking up at 4.30 in the morning and working non-stop until 6 in the evening, learning everything to be learned about the Yemeni coffee trade.

In 1902 and after the end of his contract with Bardey & Co., he moved to the city of Hodeida and founded his own trade with capital borrowed from his brother-in-law. Later that year he closed down that business and went back to France. In France, negotiations were successful to obtain a large loan from a bank, that enabled him to establish his work in Aden and pay all his debts. He brought with him his brother Emile to Aden to help manage the work founded in Hodeidah. By 1904, Besse found himself struggling to pay the financial dues to the bank. His brother-in-law – with the assistance of a lawyer – managed to settle his debts with the bank and to pay reduced premiums, but before maturity.

When he returned to France early in 1907 he met Miss Marguerite Hortense Eulalie Godefroid by chance on a train. They continued to correspond for a year, then married in April 1908. Marguerite belonged to a wealthy aristocratic family and brought much luck to Antonin. Their first child, Meryem Rose-Aye Fernande was born on 11 January 1909 in Brussels. André, their eldest son was born in June two years later in 1911. Marguerite invested heavily in his business and became a partner. The sales of coffee increased seven times in the first year of operation, and after the outbreak of World War I it reached two thousand times.

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