The Sassoons were one of the great commercial dynasties of the 19th century, as eminent as traders as the Rothschilds were as bankers. In his rich and nuanced portrait of the family, Joseph Sassoon uncovers the secrets behind their phenomenal success – how a handful of Jewish refugees exiled from Ottoman Baghdad forged a mercantile juggernaut trading cotton and opium, the role of their vast network of agents, informants and politicians in extending their reach beyond their new home in India, bridging East and West. Through the lives these ambitious figures built for themselves in Bombay, London and Shanghai, the reader is drawn into a captivating world of politics, business, society and empire – for their meteoric rise was facilitated by their ties to the British imperial project, and its waning coincided with their own.