Guest Lecture – Prof J Sassoon
Prof Joseph Sassoon will be discussing his latest book, “The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of a Dynasty” (Pantheon, October 22)
The influential merchants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped the globalization of today. The Sassoons, a Baghdadi-Jewish trading family, built a global trading enterprise by taking advantage of major historical developments during the nineteenth century. Their story is not just one of an Arab Jewish family that settled in India, traded in China, and aspired to be British. It also presents an extraordinary vista into the world in which they lived and prospered economically, politically, and socially.
Sassoon has published extensively on Iraq and its economy and on the Middle East. The Sassoons is his fifth book.
The book is not only about their rise, but also about their decline: why it happened, how political and economic changes after the First World War adversely affected them, and finally, how realizing their aspirations to reach the upper echelons of British society led to their disengagement from business and prevented them from adapting to the new economic and political world order.
Professor Sassoon is the director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Professor of History and Political Economy at Georgetown University. He holds the al-Sabah Chair in Politics and Political Economy of the Arab World. He is also a Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College, Oxford. In 2013, his book Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2012) won the prestigious British-Kuwait Prize for the best book on the Middle East.
Sassoon completed his Ph.D at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has published extensively on Iraq and its economy and on the Middle East. The Sassoons is his fifth book.
When: 02 May 2023, 8:00pm EST
Where: Online from Washington, DC streamed via IJAO Zoom (requires Pre-Registration) and our Live Youtube Channel
Category: Heritage, Iraq, Personal History, Preservation Promotion Education
