The Global Merchants: The Enterprise and Extravagance of the Sassoon Dynasty Paperback – 29 Feb. 2024

Sassoon has written a wonderful book about a fascinating family and period. His knowledge and handling of the primary sources is brilliantly done and the narrative never slows. One error though on page 17 he says that "India had been accustomed to using gold for its currency" This is incorrect , silver was the basis of its currency as England found to its cost when it was drained of that metal in the C17th, causing a financial crisis that almost destroyed William's reign.

This is the story of David Sassoon and his family. An Iraqi Jew who was thrown out of Ottoman Baghdad by the sizeable Jewish community (not by the Arabs or Muslims) in the 19th century and escaped via Iran to Bombay. His father was the Nassi of Baghdad, the Jewish Pope. His holiness became the biggest opium heroin dealer in the world as one would expect from a pious man as he is described. The family set up the Hong Kong Shanghai banking Corporation which is better known as HSBC.Though the book describes the rise and fallof the family, as far as I know HSBC the bank they founded with dope money is still around and is the biggest UK Bank. It has also been caught laundering drug money in several countries such as Mexico.In 1887 SIr Edward Sassoon, David's grandson, married Aline Caroline de Rothschild. Their house was the palace on the corner of Queensgate and Kensington Gore, opposite Kensington Palace. He was also a Baron and Member of Parliament.Eventually they expanded from India to Hong Kong selling Indian grown opium-heroin. The British East India Company fought two "opium" wars to protect their business and forced the Chinese to legalise the dope trade. That is also how the British came to control Hong Kong.Lord James Sassoon was part of Tony Blair's government and then that of David Cameron.This story tells the story of how the Iraqi Jews led by their religious leader became the proto heroin mafia, hundreds of years before the Italian Mafia and how they had close relations with the British Empire who controlled India where most of the dope was grown. How that money financed HSBC. How that got them elevated into the British nobility and government.It is a shocking story of pride in one of the most terrible crimes against humans. Killing millions of people in Asia, Europe and America.This book needs to be read as an introduction to European and American history of the 20th century. All the protagonists of WW2 were associates in the heroin trade in China only a few decades before the war.For how the British took over India where opium money financed the black pepper and tea trade I can recommend The Anarchy. Further reading on who took over the trade after WW2 I can recommend The Politics of Heroin by Prof McCoy. For the history of how the Dutch ran it before the British I can recommend Opium and the Global Political economy by Carl Trocki as well as Hans Derks The History of the Opium Problem- Assault on Asia.The trade is bigger than ever and the Nato War in Afghanistan saw opium production sky rocket. Who is running it now?

A detailed group biography of the fabled Sassoon family, from their roots in Baghdad to the higher echelons of British society, passing India, China and many other places en route, a family dynasty that spread across the globe gaining – and sometimes losing – untold wealth. An enormous amount of research has gone into the book, for which the author is to be applauded, but the detail about their business and trading activities and the amount of information about money matters makes for some tedious reading at times – unless you like that sort of thing. Personally I was more interested in the personalities and their personal lives so I did find myself skipping bits on occasion. Nevertheless, this is a wonderful book overall and brings to life a family I knew relatively little about.

Reads like a huge mosaic of names, places, wars, and alliances. This book covers so much ground! I found myself carried along by the sweep of the story, which in the end revolves around the foibles of a relatively small number of individuals. Focusing overmuch on the detail (of which there is plenty) is (IMO) to risk missing the point. Enjoy the ride - the Sassoons certainly did!