THE GLOBAL MERCHANTS
THE ENTERPRISE AND EXTRAVAGANCE OF THE SASSOON DYNASTY
JOSEPH SASSOON
Allen Lane, 448pp, £30
The author not only shares ‘a remote blood tie’ with the Baghdadi Jewish dynasty which created an international business empire from the China opium trade, explained Financial Times reviewer Stefan Wagstyl, but also ‘knowledge of the obscure Baghdadi-Jewish dialect that the business family used in their correspondence to keep it secret’. Joseph Sassoon ‘grasps the complexities of the story – the Jewish heritage, the migrant experience, the brushes with anti-Semitism and the tensions of a big multigenerational family’. The great strength of his book is ‘its relentless focus on the family’s rise and fall. Not only is this a powerful human story but it also carries contemporary resonance in a time when great fortunes are being made.’
The Sassoons ‘understood the importance of working as a family, and had the instinct about when to invest, when to sell and when to hold on to goods that most successful entrepreneurs possess’, wrote David Abulafia in his Spectator review, which concluded that Sassoon’s book is ‘a very readable, sensitive and original account of a remarkable family, deftly weaving together the history of the business, the history of the family and their place in the wider history of Britain, India and China’.
An engrossing story of the family’s rise and fall
In the , Justin Marozzi praised this ‘engrossing story of the meteoric rise and calamitous fall of the Sassoons... set against a backdrop of peak British imperialism… Although the businessheavy narrative can be demanding – there are just shy of 100 characters in the family tree – the reader is well rewarded with some pitch-perfect cameos. Take Rachel Sassoon, who became the first woman to edit a national newspaper in Britain (the ), before going one better and buying and editing the in 1893... And, of course, the
