The rise and fall of the opium-fueled Sassoon dynasty, the ‘Rothschilds of the East’

In ‘Sassoon,’ Prof. Joseph Sassoon tells how his distant family of Baghdadi Jews fled to India and built an empire on the legal narcotics trade, hobnobbing with the British royals

The die was cast. Over the following decades, the Sassoons supplanted bigger traders to become the dominant player in the export of opium from India to China.

“The controversial story of opium is woven throughout more than eighty years of the Sassoon dynasty, whose control of the opium trade in India and China by the late nineteenth century was inextricably linked to their wealth and influence,” writes Sassoon.

The Times of Israel, 2022

When Jews were kings (and opium lords) in Shanghai

Did Iraqi Jewish business leaders ever regret importing opium into 19th century China?

No, you know, I don’t think so. When you talk to the families now, they’ll say, “We didn’t know it was that bad.” They knew it was bad. The Sassoons had to dismiss some of their Chinese employees because they were addicted to opium. Many of the Jewish families fought tooth and nail against banning opium. Opium was legal and used for medicinal purposes. Like people who sell cigarettes and alcohol, their feeling was that they were filling a need. They also looked upon the Chinese as being different from Westerners. They felt that the Chinese weren’t like us, so selling opium to the Chinese was seen as something that could be done. So there is a moral reckoning for selling this drug, even though the consequences for China were catastrophic. The Kadoories did not deal in opium, and are quite proud of that today; they are sensitive to how the Chinese will, even today, bring up the topic of opium sales.

Forward, 2020