The Baghdadi Sassoon Family

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was a major breakthrough for Iraqi Trade with Europe and contributed greatly to the emergence of the Jewish upper class in Iraq. The use of the canal reduced the time and costs of transporting Iraqi products which, during the 1870s consisted mostly of dates. Iraqi  trade increased substantially as a result, and by 1875s wool and cereals became the main items of export

The virtual economic autonomy enjoyed by Iraqi  Jewish merchants developed gradually, and was in many cases aided by the personal and financial contacts that  Iraqi Jewish merchants, maintained with family members and other rich Iraqi  Jews living in the diaspora. The most notable examples of this were the Sassoons (Sassons) in Bombay, known as the Rothschilds of the East, and Yehuda and Ezra families in Calcutta. Because of the wealth, Jewish merchants in Iraq had huge sources of capital at their disposal, which eventually enabled them to dominate the local money lending and 

banking economy

This type of international  collaboration was most successfully conducted by the Sassoon family, the wealthiest of Baghdadi  Jewish merchant families. In 1932,  Da’ud (David) Sassoon Salih (1792-1864) began exporting English textiles from Bombay to Iraq and Persia. As the family business grew, David Sassoon entrusted his eldest son, ‘Abdullah Sassoon (later Sir Albert Sassoon), with the family businesses in Baghdad. Through the arrangement, the family came to control much of the trade between Iraq and Britain

As  early as the 1850, Albert Sassoon (1818-1896) concluded trading deals in South East Asia through the family firm based in Bombay. Through these connections, he imported opium, fabric  and cotton yarn into China and developed the family’s  commercial interest in the Japanese cities of Yokohama and Nagasaki

After the death of his father, the Sassoon business empire grew to include the trading firm of David Sassoon & Co., the spinning and Weaving  Co., Alliance Silk Manufacturing Co., and the  Land  improvement  Co., which was large agricultural  enterprise employing 15,000 Indian tenant  farmers. In addition, the company owned shares in the Oriental Life Assurance Co., the Prince of Wales Fire Insurance  Co., the Imperial Bank of Persia, the Bank of China and Japan, the Loan Co. of China and Japan

In 1909, they founded the Eastern Bank in London with capital investment of two million pounds  opening Baghdad branch in 1912. In 1971, ‘Standard Chartered Bank’ absorbed ‘Eastern Bank’ operation and the name of the ‘Eastern Bank Ltd.’ Slowly disappeared