Decline and fall

Joseph Sassoon's book chronicles the rise and fall of a Baghdadi Jewish family in British India and serves as a cautionary tale about the perils of mixing enterprise and extravagance

The Global Merchants: The Enterprise and Extravagance of the Sassoon Dynasty

Author: Joseph Sassoon

Publisher: Allen Lane

Pages: 409

Price: Rs 999

Why do business dynasties fade away? History suggests a typical trajectory from innovative hardworking founder (who may or may not be a robber baron) to dissolute and/or incompetent ancestors. The Sassoon dynasty, which has given its name to the Sassoon Docks in Colaba and other landmarks in Mumbai and Pune, diverged from this trend in only one respect. As refugees from the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, this entrepreneurial family of Baghdadi Jews hitched their business and social wagon to the British