The first full history of the ‘Rothschilds of the East’, from descendant Professor Joseph Sassoon.
One of the great commercial dynasties of the 19th century, the Sassoons were as eminent as traders as the Rothschilds were bankers: a handful of Jewish refugees exiled from Ottoman Baghdad who forged a mercantile juggernaut trading cotton and opium, whose vast network of agents, informants and politicians bridged East and West, beyond their new home in India.
Descendant Joseph Sassoon, Professor of History & Political Economy at Georgetown, draws on 130 years of correspondence to provide the first full history of the family, taking in the American Civil War, the British Raj, Japanese occupation of China and much more.
In an illustrated talk, he opens the family archive and brings the history of a family dynasty equal to SUCCESSION vividly to life.
Joseph Sassoon is Professor of History and Political Economy and Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and a senior associate member of St Antony’s College, Oxford. His previous books include the prize-winning Saddam Hussein’s Ba’th Party, The Iraqi Refugees and The Anatomy of Authoritarianism in the Arab Republics.
