The Jewish Monopoly on Opium

The Jewish Monopoly on Opium Still Fuels Chinese Resentment Today

A description of David Sassoon in Fortune Magazine in the US, in the 1930s. The 99 year British lease on Hong Kong expired in July, 1997, allowing China to take over its land once again. Hundreds of newspaper stories and TV reports covered that event but not one revealed how England first gained control of Hong Kong. The truth lies buried in the family line of David Sassoon, "The Rothschilds of The Far East," and their monopoly over the opium trade. Britain won Hong Kong by launching the opium Wars to give the Sassoons exclusive rights to drug an entire nation. David Sassoon was born in Baghdad, Iran in 1792. His father, Saleh Sassoon, was a wealthy banker and the treasurer to Ahmet Pasha, the governor of Baghdad (Thus making him the "court Jew" - a highly influential position) In 1829 Ahmet was overthrown due to corruption and the Sassoon family fled to Bombay, India. This was the strategic trade route to India's interior and the gateway to the Far East. In a brief time the British government granted Sassoon monopoly rights to all manufactured cotton goods, silk and most important of all - Opium - then the most addictive drug in the world.

The Beginning of the Opium Trade

This is what made David Sassoon a billionnaire in the middle 1800's - 160 years ago. In the beginning, David Sassoon wanted to trade cotton cloth with China in exchange for tea, but the Chinese did not want the cotton that Sassoon wanted to trade. At the same time, Britain had an insatiable appetite for Chinese tea, but the Qing Dynasty and its subjects did not want to buy anything that the British produced. The Chinese were, however, willing to trade tea for silver, since at that time China had a currency fully backed by silver. But the government of Queen Victoria did not want to use up the country's reserves of gold or silver in buying tea. However, Sassoon considered that the Chinese might be susceptible to opium, which could then be exchanged for tea.

Armed with this knowledge, he sailed back to England to make a new proposition to the Queen. And, on the advice of David Sassoon, Queen Victoria decided to export opium from the Indian Subcontinent to China where her military would enforce its importation and use. In Order to boost the trade David Sassoon forced the farmers in Bengali to stop farming food and turn to growing opium poppies. The climate in Bengali was very good for growing opium and Sassoon's business flourished. He became a member of the East India Company, a firm owned and run by Jews out of the City of London. So successful was the opium business that the tax the East Indian Company paid to England paid for all English wars between 1831 and 1905. Opium Was a "Jewish Business" The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1905 states that Sassoon expanded his opium trade into China and Japan. He placed his eight sons in charge of the various major opium exchanges in China. According to the 1944 Jewish Encyclopedia: "He employed only Jews in his business, and wherever he sent them he built synagogues and schools for them. He imported whole families of fellow Jews. . . and put them to work." Sassoon's sons were busy pushing this mind-destroying drug in Canton, China, and their trade expanded alarmingly. Between 1830 - 1831 they trafficked 18,956 chests of opium earning millions of dollars. Part of the profits went to Queen Victoria and the British government. In the year 1836 the trade increased to over 30,000 chests and drug addiction in coastal cities became endemic.

David Sassoon - China's own original "Merchant of Death". In 1864, the Sassoons imported 58,681 chests of opium which brought in over 20 million pounds. By 1880 it had skyrocketed to 105,508 chests, making the Sassoons the richest Jews in the world next to the Rothschilds. The Sassoons were now licensing opium dens in each British occupied area with large fees being collected by their Jewish agents. And many of these Jewish agents were the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng. These Jews had immigrated to China along the Silk Road hundreds of years ago and had so intermarried with the Chinese that they looked entirely Chinese. But they still were practicing Jews and were thus the perfect Chinese agents for the Sassoons. The entire trade was controlled by Jewish families only. Sassoon would not allow any other race to engage in "the Jews' business" of importing and selling opium. Opium was strictly a Jewish monopoly, but these Jews were working under British passports.

The corrupt British monarchy honored them with privilege and knighthood - to the disgrace of the Crown. To this day the Sassoons are in the history books as "great developers" of India, but the source of their vast wealth is never mentioned - the destruction and impoverishment of the population of China. According to a 1930s edition of Fortune Magazine (USA), the Sassoon Family monopolized more than 70% of the opium trade and controlled every nook and corner of opium traffic between India and China. This is also consistent with research and observations according to Edward LeFevour in "Western Enterprise in Late Ch'ing Dynasty China". According to these sources, in the middle 1800s, the Sassoon group was acknowledged to be the major holder (more than 70%) of all opium stocks in India and in China.

A "command performance" - Chinese middle and upper class forced at gunpoint to smoke the Sassoon's opium. The guns being conveniently provided by the British military. The Sassoons were not the only Jews involved in the trade; much of the remaining 30% was shared with other Jewish families. There was Hartung (哈同) - who is listed as "the richest of the rich" after the Sassoons, Hardoon, Kadoorie, Arnold, Abraham, Ezra and Solomon, among others. For the Sassoon's profitable troubles, Queen Victoria rewarded them with Hong Kong and the New Territories as their import and distribution base. The time has come for the entire world to condemn the British colonial masters and these Jewish "merchants" for their evil crimes of forcing opium by the shiploads onto the Chinese. By all accounts, the Jewish opium merchants did not take NO for an answer, but instead used the violent power of the British military to kill all of the 'uppity' Chinese who dared to refuse the opium. These were "command performances", persisted in until addiction took over. See the accompanying photo.

And Then The Opium Wars - Euphemistically called "The Boxer Rebellion" China's government, not too surprisingly, objected to the large-scale importation of narcotics into their country by a foreign power, provoking Britain to declare war. In 1839, the Manchu Emperor ordered that it be stopped. He named the Commissioner of Canton, Lin Tse-hsu, to lead a campaign against opium. Lin seized 2,000 chests of Sassoon opium and threw it into the river. An outraged David Sassoon demanded that Great Britain retaliate. And because the Sassoon family had married into the Rothschild family who controlled the English economy, this demand had powerful Jewish backers in England. Thus, the Opium Wars began with the British Army fighting as mercenaries of the Sassoons. They attacked cities and blockaded ports. The Chinese Army, decimated by 10 years of rampant opium addiction, proved no match for the British Army. The war ended in 1839 with the signing of "The Treaty of Nanking." This included provisions especially designed to guarantee the Sassoons the right to enslave an entire population with opium. The "peace treaty" included these provisions: Full legalization of the opium trade in China, Compensation from the opium stockpiles confiscated by Lin of 2 million pounds, Territorial sovereignty for the British Crown over several designated offshore islands. The Sassoons Use the British Army to Drug An Entire Nation British Prime Minister Palmerston wrote Crown Commissiner Captain Charles Elliot that the treaty didn't go far enough. He said it should have been rejected out of hand because: "After all, our naval power is so strong that we can tell the Emperor what we mean to hold rather than what he would cede. We must demand the admission of opium into China's interior as an article of lawful commerce and increase the indemnity payments and British access to several additional Chinese ports." Thus, China not only had to pay Sassoon the cost of his dumped opium, but reimburse England an unheard sum of 21 million pounds for the cost of the war! This gave the Sassoon's monopoly rights to distribute opium in port cities. However, even this was not good enough and Sassoon demanded the right to sell opium throughout the nation. The Manchus resisted and the British Army again attacked in the Second Opium War fought 1858 - 1860. Palmerston declared that all of interior China must be open for uninterrupted opium traffic. The British suffered a defeat at the Taku Forts in June 1859 when sailors, ordered to seize the forts, were run aground in the mud-choked harbor. Several hundred were killed or captured. An enraged Palmerston said: "We shall teach such a lesson to these perfidious hordes that the name of Europe will hereeafter be a passport of fear." The Destruction of the Yuanmingyuan

This photo taken by Ernst Ohlmer in 1873 is believed to be one of the earliest photos of the Yuamningyuan. In October, the British besieged Peking. When the city fell, British commander Lord Elgin, ordered the temples and other sacred shrines in the city sacked and burned to the ground as a show of Britain's absolute comtempt for the Chinese. In early October of 1860, the commanders of the British and French forces held a conference outside the gates of the Garden of Perfect Brightness - the Yuanmingyuan. It was situated on the western outskirts of Beijing, where they agreed to share whatever they could loot and to destroy the balance. As the primary residence of five Qing emperors, Yuanmingyuan contained hundreds of palaces, temples, libraries, theaters, pavilions, chapels, gazebos and galleries filled with priceless artworks, antiquities and personal possessions.

There followed an orgy of indiscriminate plunder in which anything that could not be carted off was destroyed. On Oct. 18, British forces were ordered by Lord Elgin - son of the Lord Elgin who removed the marble friezes from Greece’s Parthenon - to inflict a final blow, with fire, as revenge for the Chinese refusal to permit the importation of opium that was devastating their country, though ostensibly for the deaths of some British and Indian prisoners in Chinese captivity. Because Yuanmingyuan was so vast - roughly five times the size of Beijing’s Forbidden City and eight times that of Vatican City - it took an entire infantry division of nearly 4,500 men, including four British regiments and the 15th Punjabis, many weeks to set it aflame and finally render it to utter destruction. Gilded beams crashed, porcelain roofs buckled and ash filled the lakes, as so many embers snowed down on Beijing that the entire city seemed on fire, where and the clouds of smoke were so dense they eclipsed the sun. Upon hearing the news, the ailing 30-year-old Xianfeng emperor vomited blood; less than a year later he was dead. "It was a sacrifice of all that was most ancient and most beautiful," acknowledged Robert McGhee, chaplain to the British forces and a participant in, and defender of, the destruction. "It is gone, but I do not know how to tear myself from it." Arguably the greatest concentration of historic treasures in the world, dating and representing a full 5,000 years of an ancient civilisation, were either looted or totally destroyed. And all of this was done to protect the exclusive opium concessions granted to the Jewish Sassoons of Britain, and the revenue they generated for the crown. God Save the Queen, and God Bless "His Chosen People". The Yuanmingyuan is an unforgettable shame in the hearts of the Chinese people, and a reminder for the whole world that such destruction of human cultural heritage should not happen again. You can read more on the Yuanmingyuan: (1) Jewish Opium and British Imperialism: The Wanton Destruction of China's Yuanmingyuan. (2) China Remembers a Vast Crime by the West: The Destruction of the Yuanmingyuan in Beijing. The British and Jewish "Peace Treaties" and the Origin of British Hong Kong In the new "Peace Treaty" of Oct.25, 1860, the Sassoons (backed by the force of the British military) were assigned rights to a vastly expanded opium trade covering seven-eights of China. England took not only the Hong Kong peninsula as a colony but also large sections of Amoy, Canton, Foochow, Ningbo and Shanghai. Hong Kong (as a colony) was founded by the British specifically for a life of crime. When Britain gave the Jewish Sassoon family the exclusive franchise to distribute opium in China, the family needed a base of operations for the importing, processing, packaging and distribution. Hong Kong was forcibly "leased" solely for the Sassoon family's opium business. This was the bloody origin of Hong Kong's 155 years as a British colony. Readers may not be generally aware of the behind-the-scenes negotiations in London that preceded the return of Hong Kong to China. The "Iron Lady" (perhaps referring to the chastity belt, and perhaps not) Margaret Thatcher, decided at the last minute she wasn't returning Hong Kong to anybody. The word is that her ministers panicked and browbeat her into concession, for fear of starting World War III. And for sure it might have done. After all of the past humiliation, there is no way China would have accepted a betrayal or default on that agreement. The Chinese government later admitted it would have just moved in with troops and taken Hong Kong back. And you couldn't blame them. The Origin of British Hong Kong Banking After the British established Hong Kong as a colony in the aftermath of the Opium Wars, local merchants felt the need for a bank to finance the growing opium trade with China, so they established (by special permit from the British) the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation - HSBC today - "The World's Bank". This is the same bank that almost 30 years ago built the world's most expensive building as their head office in Hong Kong - 1 billion US dollars. The Sassoons Destroyed Everything They Touched Money for these people was only a tool for making more money, no matter the disasters wrought upon the Chinese - or indeed any other nation. Sir Albert Sassoon, the eldest of David Sassoon's sons took over the family "business" empire. He constructed huge textile mills in Bombay that paid true slave wages. This early example of the "off-shoring of industries" continued after World War One and ended up putting mills in Lancashire, England out of business with thousands losing their jobs to the cheap labor of the Sassoons in India. This did not stop Queen Victoria from having Albert knighted in 1872. After all, the Sassoons could prosper only after they had subverted the governance of China, whereupon Britain empowered the Sassoons to destroy and impoverish the people, for the glory of the British Empire. Solomon Sassoon moved to Hong Kong and ran the family business there until his death in 1894. Later, the entire family moved to England because with modern communications they could operate their financial empire from their luxurious estates in London. They socialized with royalty and Edward Albert. Sassoon married Aline Caroline de Rothschild in 1887 which linked their fortune with that of the Rothschilds. The Queen then also had Edward knighted. All 14 of the grandsons of David Sassoon were made officers during World War One and thus most were able to avoid combat. David Sassoon became a naturalised British citizen in 1853. He kept the dress and manners of the Baghdadi Jews, but allowed his sons to adopt English manners. His son, Abdullah changed his name to Albert, moved to England, became a Baronet and married into the Rothschild family. All the Sassoons of Europe are said to be descendants of David Sassoon. The Ubiquitous American Connection . . . Warren Delano was a senior partner in Russell & Company, whose ships carried the opium that was imposed on China. The reason Russell & Company were allowed to transport and trade in opium around Canton was that they were a Jewish company and did not interfere with the business of Sassoon's East India Company. The market was large enough for both. Russell & Company got their opium from Afghanistan through a harbor in Turkey. Delano said later he could not pretend to justify the opium trade on moral grounds, "but as a merchant I insist it has been . . . fair, honorable and legitimate", and "no more objectionable than the importation of wines and spirits to the US." He returned to America a rich man, and gave his daughter Sara in marriage to a James Roosevelt, the father of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the American President. Roosevelt's fortune was inherited from his maternal grandfather Warren Delano. Roosevelt always knew the origin of the family fortune but neither side of the family cared to discuss the source of their great wealth. The Aftermath The British-protected Sassoon opium trade brought death and destruction to millions and still plagues Asia to this day. The forcible introduction of opium into China was not some minor event. It extended for much more than 100 years, and totally devastated an entire nation of a billion people, weakening it to the point where it was a walkover for Japan to invade. In addition to the social and financial destruction, and the reversal of China's development, these events led eventually to the civil war and Mao's ascendance, and so much else since. Nothing else in China's history has had such an impact on what and where China is today. This brutal period of unconscionable imperialism and evil profiteering is surely one of the greatest two or three events in China's 5,000 years of history. Countless tens of millions of familes were destroyed; fortunes lost, daughters prostituted, production collapsed, the economy crashed. The treasures and heritage of 5,000 years of a peaceful society ravaged by madness and destruction of the British and French. The toll was unimaginable. The British Crown and the Jewish Sassoons conspired to turn an entire nation of people into drug addicts of the worst kind, solely to satisfy their greed and lust for power. This drug trade totally eviscerated China's social fabric, virtually destroying not only the country but families and all of society. And, by most estimates, the forcible imposition of opium on The Middle Kingdom by Britain, and the clever and brutal marketing by the Sassoon Jews, set back China's development at least 75 years. And, using their magical technique of putting all of the blame of their sins upon a scapegoat, to this day the Jews claim that the Opium Trade of China was the fault of the British simply because the Sassoons all had British passports. And to this day, many Chinese believe them. And the British East India Company itself was owned, at least in large part, by these same families - the Rothschilds, the Sassoons, and others. Any resentment that the Chinese might feel toward the British today, at least due to the imposition of opium, is partially misdirected. A fair share should be directed to these Jewish merchants.

A typical opium den in old China. Nowhere in British or Jewish history are the truths of this wantonly immoral family and the evil-inspired colonisation told. Instead, the Jewish books and encyclopedias all praise the Sassoons for their "great contribution" to Indian society, without a mention of the God-forsaken criminality of these people. And of course, the sentimental British still revel in fond memories of their once-great Empire - when they ruled the world and the Seven Seas - while concurrently suffering a pathological amnesia for the unconscionable evils they committed. It was due to this, to the weakened and almost helpless state of the country, that other foreigners - and then the Japanese - could move in and attempt to colonise this entire great country. But there's more. Iimperial wars require heavy financing. It is true that Japan raided the treasuries of every country they invaded, to obtain funds for further expansion.

War financing can be difficult to trace, but it is almost a certainty that much of their financing came from the Jewish bankers who have always financed wars - the Rothschilds, Joseph Schiff and, in this case, the Sassoons - who used their profits from destroying and weakening China to finance the Japanese invasion and further colonisation of China. It is popular lore that China welcomed and gave harbor to many Jews during their troubled times in Germany during the Second War, but I have seen no hard evidence that this was the case. It would appear that "China" did not invite, receive or harbor Jews during those periods, that this is yet another common (and deliberate) misconception. Evidence suggests that the influx of Jews into China was arranged by the Sassoons, the Hardoons, probably Schiff, and other Jewish families, in agreements made with the Japanese military occupation which they were helping to finance. Virtually all of those Jewish immigrants came primarily to Shanghai, which was at the time well outside the control of China's government which had nothing whatever to say about the influx of immigrants there, Jews or otherwise.

There are 2 articles in this section: Part 1: The Jewish Monpoly on Opium Still Fuels Chinese Resentment Today Click Here Editorial by 龙信明 Part 2: Reinvesting the Profits There is one more part to this story - the use to which the Sassoons, Hardoons and others put their opium profits - the purchase of virtually all of Shanghai and other Chinese cities, and the financing of the Japanese invasion of China. This article is currently being written and will be posted shortly. Editorial by 龙信明

Bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sassoon http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/jan/article129.html http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2001/0510/cu18-2.html http://www.earnshaw.com/shanghai-ed-india/tales/t-sass.htm http://www.cjss.org.cn/wangwen.htm