Joseph Sassoon

Historian Professor Joseph Sassoon tells the story of one of the 19th-century’s best-known commercial families, the Sassoons, who were known as the ‘Rothschilds of the East’.

Sassoon draws on the family archives to explain how a group of refugee Jews exiled from Ottoman Baghdad built a giant mercantile operation trading cotton and opium from their new home in India. Their rise was linked to the British Empire and their decline coincided with its decline. He shows how they played a role in big events of the age including the American Civil War, the establishment of the British Raj, the Opium Wars, the Japanese occupation of China, and the beginnings of globalisation.

Sassoon is not a member of the family but was born in Baghdad and can trace a connection back to a distant ancestor. He 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.

This event is part of the festival’s programme of Jewish and Hebrew literature and culture.