Sassoons

"The Rothschilds arrived at the Court of St James's from the ghetto of Frankfurt-am-Main, where a small trader in old coins and medals became factor to the Landgrave of Hesse-Hanau and laid the foundations of a spectacular banking empire. They remained a close-knit clan ofEuropeans. The Sassoons were courtiers and merchant princes from their earliest days. Their corporate personality came to flower in the East without always transplanting too smoothly, despite Park Lane mansions, grouse moors in Scotland and a persistent entry at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. Consequently, their destiny would prove more convulsive and off-centre than that of the less aristocratic, but relatively predictable, House of Rothschild."

"Like all provident men of business, the Sassoons kept only the most valuable portables in their home, and these under constant guard, but their city bazaars and booths were always stocked from floor to ceiling. Bales of bright silks were shipped hundreds of miles on rafts by the mercers of Bushire; India and far-off Kabul sent cotton goods, horses, gold and silver ornaments, while coffers of spices and trinkets of every kind arrived by sea, or more usually by camel caravan, from Java and Singapore. Much was sold locally, but for generations the family had steadily built up an export business in hides, dates, metals and, above all, wool. As soon as the sheep-shearing began, their agents would be active among the Bedouin tribes of the interior who sold their wool in exchange for cotton garments, shoes and cameos."

"This triumvirate preferred to accept crushing personal burdens rather than delegate to strangers. Their meagre staff of warehouse clerks was recruited exclusively from ex-Baghdad Jews who would seldom be taken into private counsel. Many an ambitious employee, even when related to the family by marriage, would discover painfully that 'David Sassoon & Sons' meant precisely that. In policy and business routine, the young men reacted to their father and each other with almost a conditioned reflex. Physically, however, they had little in common except the hereditary mouth which turned down at the corners and often gave strangers an unfortunate impression of disdain."

"Authority was now heavily weighted at the English end, an ideal platform for launching a brilliant social programme but remote from the firm's traditional strongholds in India and China. In taking this step, the three brothers became in effect absentee landlords. By contrast, E. D. Sassoon & Co. entrenched itself still deeper in Bombay. It was the natural supply base of a house looking towards Europe for its imports but eager to service the hungry consumer markets, both at home and in the Far East."