The Global Merchants: The Enterprise and Extravagance of the Sassoon Dynasty

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The astonishing story of the Sassoons, one of the nineteenth century's pre-eminent commercial families and 'the Rothschilds of the East' The Sassoons were one of the great business dynasties of the nineteenth century, as eminent as traders as the Rothschilds were bankers. This book reveals the secrets behind the family's phenomenal success- how a handful of Jewish exiles from Ottoman Baghdad forged a mercantile juggernaut from their new home in colonial Bombay, the vast network of agents, informants and politicians they built, and the way they came to bridge East and West, culturally as well as commercially. Through the lives these ambitious figures built for themselves, the reader is drawn into a captivating world of politics and power, innovation and intrigue, high society and empire. The Global Merchants is thus at once a portrait of a single family and a panorama of the hundred and thirty years of their prominence- from the Opium Wars to the American Civil War, the establishment of the British Raj to India's independence. Together these give a fresh perspective on one of the defining forces of their age and the present- globalization. The Sassoons were variously its agents, advocates and casualties, and watching them moving through the world, we perceive the making of our own.

Reviews

A tale reminiscent of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks ... Not only is this a powerful human story but it also carries contemporary resonance in a time when great fortunes are again being made -- Stefan Wagstyl * Financial Times *
The engrossing story of the meteoric rise and calamitous fall of the Sassoons, set against the backdrop of peak British imperialism ... what a scintillating show it was while it lasted, as this vivid and richly researched book reveals -- Justin Marozzi * The Sunday Times *
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 -- David Abulafia * Spectator *
Logan Roy might do well to read The Global Merchants for tips ... a tale of commercial derring-do and dissection of the paperwork, the exigencies of calm, but rapid, decision-making that could could lead to boom or bust -- Paul French * South Morning China Post *

Author Bio

Joseph Sassoon is Professor of History and Political Economy at Georgetown University, a Senior Associate Member at St Antony's College, Oxford and a Trustee of the Bodleian Library. His ancestors were forcibly separated from the Sassoons of this book early in the nineteenth century, but he is fluent in the languages they spoke and the obscure Judeo-Arabic script - indecipherable to previous historians - they used in their private communications, which are the foundation of this book.