Bookshelf: The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire

In Shanghai, the grand Art Deco Peace Hotel on the Bund is the most recognizable legacy of a global empire that flourished here for nearly a century. Yet the Peace Hotel (originally the Cathay Hotel) and its famous bon vivant owner, Sir Victor Sassoon, were the final chapter in the story of the Sassoons, a story that begins more than a century earlier with Sir Victor’s great-grandfather, David Sassoon.

From left: The Cathay Hotel, today the Fairmont Peace Hotel; Sir Victor Sassoon (photo: National Portrait Gallery); David Sassoon (photo: Lot-Art)

David Sassoon, son of the Pasha’s chief treasurer, was born in 1792 into Baghdad aristocracy, but a change in regime put a price on his head, and in the 1830s, he fled with his young family, first to Basra (Iraq) and then to the safety of British-controlled Bombay. In India, he began building what would become an empire, fueled by the rise of the British empire and burgeoning global trade.