The World's Banker. The History of the House of Rothschild.

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What if someone wrote a book claiming that the development of modern capitalism was the product of a secretive and inbred family of Jews, for half a century the wealthiest men alive, the bankers to every major European monarch, who gained their fortune as war profiteers in the age of Napoloeon and went on to control the international bond market and the currency exchanges of Europe, who pulled the strings of diplomacy and empire throughout the Hundred Years’ Peace when Europe ruled the world, a family whose hundred tentacles still extend, secretive as ever, through the banks and financiers of the world, and who are behind some of the largest and most sinister corporations of the last century, such as Rio Tinto Mining Corporation and De Beers Diamonds? Ha! What kind of neo-Nazi nut case would whip up a conspiracy theory that grandiose and unlikely?! This family is a real rags to riches family. Starting from unthinkable conditions (and restrictions) in Frankfurt's Jugendgasse, to the pinnacle of finance in less than 2 generations. I look forward to the second part. Ferguson also praises the Rothschilds for the intelligent and generous support that they gave to many artists, writers and poets. I believe that this aspect of the Rothschilds is generally known and so I make no further comments.

it was always a weakness of the conservative argument against higher taxation that in general private charitability at the turn of the century tended to fall short of the traditional 10 per cent" (p. 276) A major work of economic, social and political history, Niall Ferguson's The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker 1849-1999 is the second volume of the acclaimed, landmark history of the legendary Rothschild banking dynasty. Niall Ferguson's House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets 1798-1848 was hailed as a 'great biography' by Time magazine and named one of the best books of 1998 by Business Week. If you, like me, groan loudly at shows and cultural items that glorify European nobility, from Pierre in War and Peace to all the Victorian movies/shows where every male actor looks like Eddie Redmayne, then the story of Rothschilds will be deeply satisfying. Niall Ferguson is a fantastic writer, but if I may riff for a second... This second of two volumes on the history of The House of Rothschild, written by Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, continues the family’s adventures from the third to the fifth generation, and then up to the turn of the 21st century. With exception of the epilogue, which draws on public materials, the Author’s sources include the private correspondence of family members and is thus able to offer an original insight into the family’s history. Despite Ferguson’s clear and fluent prose, I sometimes felt lost in the narrative because of the growing number of family members, unable to know who was whom. I’ve watched the aforementioned series and thought he was interesting enough to look up his earlier works.

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While many contemporaries noted the irony of Jewish bankers being the main prop for the the "Holy Alliance" of Catholic monarchies in the East, and the Protestant ones in the West, Ferguson shows that in fact if the Rothschild's had a bias towards anything it was towards peace, an expensive and armed peace they preferred, but peace nonetheless. They often also used their clout to demand increased rights for Jews and sometimes even more parliamentry democracy, which they thought stabilized investments. Perhaps the best part of the book is showing the Rothschild's participation in the tangled webs of international diplomacy at the time, where ideologies were attached to regimes and countries like in few later periods. Liberals tended to support French and Belgian claims in any circumstances, while reactionaries supported Austria and Prussia, and domestic politics often involved playing off different nations as much as different policies. On the whole, the Rothschild worked across these ideological lines, but they turned more Whig and liberal as time went on. From Crimea to World War II, wars repeatedly threatened the stability of the Rothschilds' worldwide empire. Despite these many global upheavals, theirs remained the biggest bank in the world up until the First World War, their interests extending far beyond the realm of finance. Yet the Rothschilds' failure to establish themselves successfully in the United States proved fateful, and as financial power shifted from London to New York after 1914, their power waned. I don’t intend to provide extension observations about each of these volumes. To do each one justice would require much more time than I can devote to the task. The author himself wrote that the creation of this history was much longer than planned for: I am not surprised given the wealth of material. Ferguson gives us a fascinating view of the Rothschilds as they rise to riches and come to hold power. The Rothschilds used their influence to discourage war and to promote peace. As a consequence the pro-war parties in several countries launched propaganda campaigns about the undue influence of Jewish bankers in European politics. Niall Ferguson argues quite rightly that we would all be better off if Jewish Bankers did in fact control our politics as war costs lives, destroys property and creates poverty. Jewish Bankers in contrast want people to live long, amass property and become rich. And while not everyone in the family may have been financially astute (or even keen on making it their career), they became (like many other late-Victorian/Edwardian era gentlemen botanists, naturalists, and other forms of scientists – with many writing learned papers on their subject.

Theirs is a rags-to-riches story. The Jewish Ghetto of Frankfurt was one of the most repressive in Western or Central Europe. Begun in the 12th century it had not changed much in the 18th: the laws controlling the lives and livelihoods of Jews were very strict and repressive. The man who is considered the “founder” of the famous branch of the family, Mayer Amschel Rothschild (an Ashkenazi Jew) began life as the son of a respectable man, but not one of wealth. Both of his parents died before his thirteen birthday and after and apprenticeship in Hanover, he returned to Frankfurt in1764. The family in some sense seemed to resemble gods to their fellow Jewish people, the family also heaped scorn on those who converted to Christianity for personal (and apparently shortsighted) gain, while similarly also disowning family members who did not take up the family business and even more so if they converted to Christianity. Also of note in their early years, it sounded like they were willing to give decent shares of the business in their estates to family members who were NOT immediately sons or daughters just to keep the size enough for them to be interested. Ferguson explains that the Rothschilds refused to finance wars for two reasons. The first was that the loser of the war inevitably defaulted on its loans. The second was that the winner was so weakened by the fight that it defaulted half the time. Thus in an era when governments depended on banks for financing, the opinions of the Rothschilds were of considerable importance. The Rothschilds were a key part of the system that prevented war in Europe for 100 years between Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and WWI. Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, former Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and current senior fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and founder and managing director of advisory firm Greenmantle LLC. This book has a lot of detail, which I enjoyed quite a bit. In addition to detail about the family it goes into depth about finance and economics, and the politics (and wars, etc.) going on in Europe during the first half of the 19th century, obviously as how they pertain to the Rothschild family.

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This is probably the best book of Niall Ferguson who much prefers giving us his opinion to doing real research. The House of Rothschild is a fascinating study of a brilliant family that made a great contribution to history and the arts. Three things would give an investor and edge over his rival: closeness to the center of political life, the source of news; the speed with which he could receive news of events in the states far and near, and the ability to manipulate the transmission of that news to other investors." (p. 5) Despite the turmoil of these years, the family’s wealth grew and when Nathan died in 1836, his fortune was easily twice (and possibly as much as five times) that of the next wealthiest man in England in the 1830s-50s; thus, making him the wealthiest man in the world by far. At his death, brother James became the leading figure in the family until shortly before his own death in 1868.