How Opium Trade Fueled the Sassoon Dynasty, the "Rothschilds of the East"

David Sassoon (1792–1864), born into a prominent Jewish family in Baghdad (or possibly Aleppo), traveled to Constantinople to appeal to Sultan Mahmud II, accusing the local governor Dawud Pasha of corruption. When Sassoon's actions became known, Ottoman authorities accused him of conspiracy and betrayal. He was subsequently arrested and threatened with death unless a large ransom was paid. 

David Sassoon (seated) and his sons Elias David, Albert (Abdallah) 

and Sassoon David, Bombay, around 1855. 

 

Facing death or ruin, Sassoon fled Baghdad in 1829. He reunited with his family in Bushehr, Persia, before resettling in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1832. At the time, Bombay was part of the British Empire's holdings in India, before the British Raj period (1858-1947). The Sassoon family is said to have arrived there penniless, but they were equipped with resilience, high ambitions, unscrupulousness, multilingual skills, and an established extensive network within the Jewish Baghdadi diaspora that stretched from London to Shanghai.

 

In Bombay, David founded David Sassoon & Co. in a modest counting house, and traded in cotton yarn, tea, silk, spices, precious metals—and, critically, opium. Already an extremely profitable enterprise, the opium trade became even more lucrative after the First Opium War (1839-42), when Britain used a series of imposed treaties to open Chinese markets. Sassoon established branches across Asia—including in Calcutta, Hong Kong (1843), Shanghai (1845), Canton, and Yokohama—as well as in major cities in Persia and the UK, placing his sons in charge, similar to how the Rothschilds ran their operation in Europe.

 

The Opium Wars, which destroyed the Chinese Empire.

 

When patriarch David Sassoon died in 1864, he left his 14 children a fortune of approximately £4 million, roughly equivalent to $3 billion today. His company, David Sassoon & Co., continued to dominate the opium trade, controlling an estimated 70% of the India-to-China market by the 1860s and 1870s. Surpassing rivals like Russell & Company, Jardine Matheson, and Dent & Co., the family's immense profits for decades after his death cemented their status as one of the world's wealthiest and most influential families, earning them the nickname "the Rothschilds of the East." 

Following its initial 1729 anti-opium edict, China saw imports surge from 200 chests annually to 4,500 by 1800. This explosive growth accelerated in the 1830s, reaching 40,000 chests by 1838. The trade only intensified after the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, climbing to 70,000 chests (4,550 metric tons) annually by 1858, approximately equivalent to one year's worth of the total global production of opium between 1995 and 2005.

After David's death, the Sassoon family empire fragmented as his sons Abdallah (later Sir Albert) and Elias David established separate ventures. Elias founded E.D. Sassoon & Co. in 1867, and both branches diversified beyond opium, moving into cotton mills, banking, real estate, and infrastructure projects like the Sassoon Docks in Bombay and the iconic Sassoon House in Shanghai. As treaties phased out the opium trade in the early 20th century, the family’s focus on new industries became critical. David’s granddaughter, Flora (Farha) Sassoon, a daughter of Albert, became a partner and effectively ran the Bombay operations starting in 1894. Under her leadership, profits rose despite regional turmoil, but her brothers, unwilling to accept a woman in charge, removed her after just seven years.

 

Chinese opium smokers c. 1858.

 

While the Sassoons and other prominent figures—including Warren Delano Jr., Thomas Handasyd Perkins, John Perkins Cushing, John Jacob Astor, Robert Bennet Forbes and John Murray Forbes—built family fortunes, dynasties and financial empires on the opium trade, its human cost in China was devastating. The widespread addiction of up to 20 million Chinese destabilized society and drained precious metals from the Middle Kingdom during its “Century of Humiliation.” This economic and political chaos, a direct result of the two Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860) and British and American opium trafficking, fueled a chain of disastrous events. The most catastrophic was the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), which resulted in an estimated 20 to 30 million deaths from fighting, famine, and plague. 

 

Opium stockpiled in a warehouse in Patna, 1850s: The Sassoon family's extensive opium trade into China was

directly related to the British East India Company's monopoly on opium production in places like Patna in Bengal.

 

In 1853, David Sassoon gained British citizenship, boldly affirming his allegiance to Queen Victoria in Hebrew and reframing the family's identity as "British-Jewish." His immense success in drug trafficking was accompanied by extensive philanthropy: he commissioned synagogues, schools, orphanages, hospitals, and libraries, dedicating about 0.25% of profits to religious and charitable tzedakah. By the early 20th century, the dynasty began to decline. This was a result of internal rivalries, over-assimilation into the British aristocracy, and poor strategic decisions—such as Victor Sassoon's failure to foresee Imperial Japan's rise when he centralized operations in Shanghai.  

Sir Victor Sassoon (1881-1961), the last of the great merchant princes of the Sassoon dynasty, with

glamorous women (including Marlene Dietrich on the right) during one of his Shanghai parties in 1935. 

 

Yet, today, the Sassoon family's legacy continues through the Sassoon Family Continuation Trust and J. Sassoon Financial Group LLC, led by non-executive chairman David Shlomo Sassoon. This modern entity has diversified away from the family's historical ventures, now managing investments in a range of sectors including composite materials, oil and gas, finance, mining, and food security, focused particularly on the US, Israel, and African markets. Beyond their financial operations, many of the Sassoons maintain a discreet profile and remain "grounded in Jewish heritage." This is exemplified by individuals such as Rabbi Sliman Sassoon, who leads initiatives like the Ohel David Sassoon Institute in Jerusalem, and by the fact that a street there has been named in honor of Flora Sassoon.

 

 

» Bruce Fein, Master Trustee of the Sassoon Family Continuation Trust, unveiled today plans to transfer all Trust's unsurpassed assets valued at over $100 billion to the United States located at present in Switzerland or elsewhere abroad. The Sassoon Family Continuation Trust originated 1495 in the aftermath of the Spanish Inquisition.  Its longevity and wealth are unrivaled.  The Trust proudly honors and celebrates Orthodox Judaism and is committed to the welfare of the United States and the economic and physical security of Israel. The trust's sole beneficiary is David E. Sassoon, grandson of Eli Nissim Sassoon and executive chairman of J. Sassoon Group, a Washington, DC based private equity and investment banking firm. « 

The Sassoon Family Continuation Trust, August 25, 2021.

  

See also:

Joseph Sassoon (2022)  - The Sassoons: The Great Opium Merchants and the Making of an Empire.
Amitav Ghosh (2023) - Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories.

Beatrix Conti (2019) - The Sassoons: From Outsiders to Insiders of Empire 1830s – 1910s.
Steven Ujifusa (2018) - Barons of the Sea.

Frederic Delano Grant Jr. (1986) - A Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade. 

 

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Know your Enemies.