SalePaperback
The Global Merchants
Publisher:
Penguin
| Author:
Sassoon, Joseph
| Language:
English
| Format:
Paperback
Publisher:
Penguin
Author:
Sassoon, Joseph
Language:
English
Format:
Paperback
₹899 ₹674
Save: 25%
In stock
Ships within:
5-7 Days
In stock
ISBN:
SKU
9780241388655
Categories Business & Management, New Releases, New Releases & Pre-orders
Categories: Business & Management, New Releases, New Releases & Pre-orders
Page Extent:
448
The astonishing story of the Sassoons, one of the nineteenth century’s preeminent 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. As one competitor remarked, ‘silver and gold, silks, gums and spices, opium and cotton, wool and wheat – whatever moves over sea or land feels the hand or bears the mark of Sassoon & Co.’
Drawing for the first time on the vast family archives, Joseph Sassoon brings vividly to life a succession of remarkable characters. From a single generation: Flora, the first woman to steer a major global business, Siegfried, the poet, and Victor, the tycoon who drew the stars of Hollywood’s silent era to his skyscraper in Shanghai. Through the lives these ambitious figures built for themselves in London, Bombay and beyond, 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 an intimate portrait of a single family and a panorama of the hundred and thirty years of their prominence: from the Opium Wars and opening of China to the American Civil War, the establishment of the British Raj to India’s independence. Together these give a fresh perspective on the evolution of 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.
Be the first to review “The Global Merchants” Cancel reply
Description
The astonishing story of the Sassoons, one of the nineteenth century’s preeminent 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. As one competitor remarked, ‘silver and gold, silks, gums and spices, opium and cotton, wool and wheat – whatever moves over sea or land feels the hand or bears the mark of Sassoon & Co.’
Drawing for the first time on the vast family archives, Joseph Sassoon brings vividly to life a succession of remarkable characters. From a single generation: Flora, the first woman to steer a major global business, Siegfried, the poet, and Victor, the tycoon who drew the stars of Hollywood’s silent era to his skyscraper in Shanghai. Through the lives these ambitious figures built for themselves in London, Bombay and beyond, 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 an intimate portrait of a single family and a panorama of the hundred and thirty years of their prominence: from the Opium Wars and opening of China to the American Civil War, the establishment of the British Raj to India’s independence. Together these give a fresh perspective on the evolution of 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.
About Author
Joseph Sassoon is the director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Professor of History and Political Economy at Georgetown University. He holds the al-Sabah Chair in Politics and Political Economy of the Arab World. He is also a Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College, Oxford. In 2013, his book Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2012) won the prestigious British-Kuwait Prize for the best book on the Middle East.
Sassoon completed his Ph.D at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has published extensively on Iraq and its economy and on the Middle East. His latest book is titled: The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire (Pantheon, 2022)
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.
Be the first to review “The Global Merchants” Cancel reply
[wt-related-products product_id="test001"]
Related products
India Unboxed: 75 Quirky Aspects That Define the Nation
Save: 15%
Whistles of Siphoong: Tales from Assam’s Bodo Heartland
Save: 10%
RELATED PRODUCTS
India Unboxed: 75 Quirky Aspects That Define the Nation
Save: 15%
Whistles of Siphoong: Tales from Assam’s Bodo Heartland
Save: 10%
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.