The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets 1798-1848

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A stupendous achievement, a triumph of historical research and imagination.”—Robert Skidelsky, The New York Review of Books I have discovered Hannah Rothschild late - her The Improbability of Love was published in 2015. It is the perfect lying-on-the-sofa-with-cake read, being a witty, knowledgeable, sprawling, ingenious insider satire set in the art world. It has art dealers, Russian billionaires, hedgies, sheiks and a-love story. Some of the story is narrated by a painting, but don't let that put you off, it's pure joy from start to finish. Her next novel, House of Trelawney, about the rise and fall of some Cornish poshos, is out in February and I loved that even more.'

I’ve watched the aforementioned series and thought he was interesting enough to look up his earlier works. I also appreciate his analysis that showed while the London house was the biggest in the early 1800's, the other houses grew more after that and were equals to London by the time of Nathan's death. James, Salomon and Nathan all came under conflicting pressures from the governments in Paris, Vienna and London: but the final outcome was a united and carefully calculated policy of non-commitment. (p. 132)Ferguson charts the travails of the Rothschilds as they expand from humble merchants in Frankfurt to probably the richest and most influential bankers ever. He has an interesting analysis that supports his hypothesis that no one in this world has ever been richer compared to his fellow man than Nathan Rothschild.

These are discussed in Sacred Image and Illusion in Late Flemish Manuscripts, Robert G. Calkins, Cornell University. 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... 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?! An entertaining dissection of the very British obsessions with money, class and scandal... High Time is a lot of fun' - Irish TimesNathaniel Rothschild is Kanye West. To the European nobles he did business with: He knows you don't like him, he sees you cringing at his Jewishness, but he also knows he runs the show, and he's going to make damn sure you know it. You get giddy reading the contempt he has for the average European aristocrat. It's delightfully similar to the joy we all take, and I'm sure Kanye takes, in making a fool out of Taylor Swift. Unfortunately, in the twentieth century European governments discovered income tax which allowed them to finance total wars and to ignore the wishes of the bankers. As result, the world experienced the two most destructive wars ever. Ferguson's argument is irrestible to anyone who has taken a university level course in economics or finance. I heartily recommend this book. The art expert chat is always a triumph. What more can I say? It's my Book of the Year already.¹ BARBARA TRAPIDO

Why were the French more willing to pay for defeat after the fact than to pay for the chance of victory before war broke out?" (re: Napoleon III's France's willingness to pay more money in reparations than for the initial war in 1870). (p.217) Hannah’s features and interviews appear in The Telegraph, The Times (London), The New York Times and Vogue. Her documentaries have been shown on the BBC, HBO and at international film festivals. She has lectured on art, film and philanthropy at the Getty, the Royal Academy of Arts and at the Hay Festival. From August 2015 to October 2019 she was the first female Chair of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery in London. Virgin and Child on a Crescent Moon, f.197v. Accepted as by Gerard David, one of only a few miniatures attributed to him. [6] High Time - high style, high jinx. My kind of novel - intelligent escapism at its most satisfying' - Gyles Brandreth It was an amazing account of how merchants could set themselves up as bankers and establish banking houses across multiple countries, overcome the barriers just about all other Jews faced at the time (including restrictions on land ownership), and how family members could be "kept in line."The story of the early 20th-century family is dominated by two women who married into the name ‘Rothschild’. Rózsika von Wertheimstein was a rakish Hungarian intellectual, while Dolly Pinto (1895-1988) was a privileged, sharp-witted young woman betrothed to an older Rothschild man before she was out of her teens. Thrust into positions of huge political responsibility while the family’s young men were fighting in the First World War, the pair would prove themselves to be talented diplomats and lobbyists, playing under-recognised roles in the foreign policy debates that resulted in the Balfour Declaration (by which the British government committed itself to the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine). Rózsika would end up taking on some of her husband’s responsibilities at the Rothschild bank, negotiating loans for the government of her native Hungary, and writing letters to Dolly in which she described the chilly welcome and the hideous mushroom soup she’d been presented with in the bank’s dining room. We love Hamilton, but perhaps we're not far enough away from the financial crisis to truly love Nathaniel Rothschild like we love Hamilton, but unlike the white Hamilton, Nathaniel is a continuous outcast Jew. 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 the year by Business Week.Now, with all the depth, clarity and drama with which he traced their ascent, Ferguson – the first historian with access to the long-lost Rothschild family archives – concludes his myth-breaking portrait of once of the most fascinating and power families of all time.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. Think my favorite takeaways were on the brilliance of the family's strategy in the latter half of the 19th century. Essentially by playing it more conservative and versus smaller (as they all were) competitors, it meant they both were unlikely to take stupid risks that could jeopardize the business and also would be unable to be seen as making unusually high profits that could invoke the wrath of any government that might have been in such a position. Double-edged sword though was growing number of heirs who found their portions of a pie not as generous as desired and many wishing to pull funds out of the business.

The Rothschild Prayerbook". Christie's. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Descriptive video. Rózsika died in 1940, but Dolly would live long enough to see the dream of early 20th-century Zionists realised in the creation of Israel. She became a leading patron of the young state, and a confidante to several of its most important leaders.

The family remained Jewish in faith and race. They may not have been the most devout, buy they did observe the rules and laws and did not “convert” like many others (e.g. Benjamin Disraeli’s family.) When one of Nathan’s daughters did convert to marry, she was shunned by almost everyone including her own mother. They were seen as exemplars of successful Jews who also cared about their “co-religionists”; speaking out for tolerance and donating to community needs and causes.