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Hong Kong and The Sassoon Opium Wars
The 99 year British lease on Hong Kong expired in July
1997, allowing the Red Chinese to take over. Hundreds of newspaper stories and TV reports have covered this event but not one revealed how England first gained control of Hong
Kong! The truth lies buried in the family line of David Sassoon
(above), '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 interior India and the gateway to the Far East. In a brief time the British government granted Sassoon
'monopoly rights' to all manufacture of cotton goods, silk and most important of all - Opium - then the most addictive drug in the
world!
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. 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.
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. 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: 1) Full legalization of the opium trade in China, 2) compensation from the opium stockpiles confiscated by Lin of 2 million
pounds, 3) territorial sovereignty for the British Crown over several designated offshore
islands.
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 interior China 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'.
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 the new
'Peace Treaty' of Oct.25, 1860, the British were assigned rights to vastly expanded opium trade covering seven-eights of China, which brought in over 20 million pounds in 1864
alone. In that year, the Sassoons imported 58,681 chests of opium and by 1880 it had skyrocketed to 105,508 chests making the Sassoons the richest Jews in the
world. England was given the Hong Kong peninsula as a colony and large sections of
Amoy, Canton, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai. The Sassoons were now licensing opium dens in each British occupied area with large fees being collected by their Jewish
agents. Sassoon would not allow any other race to engage in
'the Jews' business'. However, the British government would not allow any opium to be imported into Europe!
Sir Albert Sassoon (middle), the eldest of David Sassoon's sons took over the family
business empire. He constructed huge textile mills in Bombay to pay slave labor
wages. This expansion continued after World War One and ended up putting mills in Lancashire, England out of business with thousands losing their
jobs. This did not stop Queen Victoria from having Albert knighted in 1872. 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 also had Edward
knighted. All 14 of the grandsons of David Sassoon were made officers during World War One and
most were able to avoid combat.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's (below) fortune was inherited from his maternal grandfather Warren Delano. In 1830 he was a senior partner of Russell & Company. It was their merchant fleet which carried Sassoon's opium to China and returned with tea. Warren Delano moved to
Newburgh, N.Y. In 1851 his daughter Sara Married a well-born
neighbor, James Roosevelt - the father of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He always knew the origin of the family fortune but refused to discuss it.
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