The House of Rothschild – Niall Ferguson
In the nineteenth century, the Rothschild family built the largest bank in the world and became a byword for wealth and financial power. Their rise from the cramped Jewish quarter of Frankfurt to the heights of European finance is one of the most remarkable stories in economic history. In The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets, 1798-1848, the first volume of his acclaimed two-volume history, historian Niall Ferguson tells how it happened.
Ferguson was given unprecedented access to the family’s archives, including thousands of letters exchanged among family members, many written in a coded Judeo-German script. Drawing on these sources, he traces how Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a dealer in coins and antiques, built a business serving a German prince and then sent his five sons to establish branches in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Vienna and Naples. Working together, the brothers created an international network that allowed them to move money and information across Europe faster than almost anyone else.
The book describes how the Rothschilds profited from financing governments during and after the Napoleonic Wars, particularly through Nathan Rothschild’s operations in London, and how they became leading dealers in government bonds, shaping the finances of the great powers. Ferguson examines their relationships with statesmen and monarchs, their role in politics and diplomacy, their efforts to secure rights for Jews, and the myths and antisemitic conspiracy theories that grew up around them, including legends about the Battle of Waterloo, which he evaluates critically.
The volume ends with the revolutions of 1848, which threatened the order the Rothschilds had helped to finance.
Detailed and authoritative, this volume is a major work of financial history for readers interested in banking, Europe and Jewish history.
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