Amazon.com
Founded in the late 18th century by expatriate German Jews, the London-based House of Rothschild was within decades the largest banking enterprise in the world. Its principals controlled a vast portion of the industrial world's wealth--more so, Oxford historian Niall Ferguson writes, than any family has since--and as a result enjoyed tremendous political influence in the major capitals of Europe, counting as allies such important figures as Metternich and Wellington. That influence would provoke countless anti-Semitic tracts fulminating against Jewish usury and against the power of "Eastern potentates" in the empires of England and France. Although the Rothschilds were well aware of their power and not reluctant to use it, they operated fairly, Ferguson notes. For example, whereas lending rates in the textile industry, in which the Rothschilds got their start, were often 20 percent, the fledgling house charged 5 to 9 percent. Through shrewd, complex negotiations they helped promote peace and the beginnings of economic union throughout Europe.
Ferguson's sprawling history covers much ground and involves a cast of hundreds of players. At the outset he notes that his book was commissioned by the modern descendants of the House of Rothschild; even so, he approaches his task with careful balance and a critical eye, pointing out the Rothschilds' failings as well as successes. The result is a fine, solid contribution to economic history, one that, unlike so many books in the field, is eminently readable. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
Anyone interested in finance, European history or the rise of one spectacularly successful Jewish family will find the first volume of this history of the Rothschilds spellbinding. Equipped with unprecedented access to pre-1915 Rothschild archives, Oxford historian Ferguson begins the family history with Frankfurt merchant Mayer Amschel, but the real story starts with the arrival of the most capable of his sons, Nathan Mayer, in England 200 years ago. Each of Mayer's five sons was located in different cities?Paris, London, Vienna, Naples and Frankfurt. Combined with a mandated unity that kept the brothers remarkably close while excluding daughters, in-laws and strangers, this geographic dispersal gave the family's financial firm an unbeatable edge, despite Mayer's sons being of unequal competence. N.M. Rothschild is the one Ferguson chooses as his protagonist (his great-great-grandson suggested the project to the author). It was largely because of this Finanzbonaparte that from 1815 on, the Rothschilds were everywhere part of Europe?they dominated the international bond market; bought and sold commodities such as cotton, tobacco, sugar, copper and mercury; and influenced Metternich, Wellington, Queen Victoria, Bismarck, Gladstone and Disraeli. Using his access to the 13,000 entries in the Rothschild files, Ferguson debunks myths and carefully reconstructs the truth. Not only has he done a brilliant job of depicting this far-flung family but he also manages to offer an amazing insider's look at the financial, political and military aspects of early 19th-century European life. His exhaustive study surpasses anything about the Rothschilds to date. (Nov.) FYI: Ferguson's second volume on the Rothschilds is due out next year.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Their enthralling story has often been told before, but never in such authoritative detail.
The Wall Street Journal, Stanley Weintraub
...a rich and compelling book ... a feast--if, perhaps, with too many dishes. The immense cast almost requires a menu card.
The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Arthur Hertzberg
Ferguson's first volume on the Rothschilds is a tour de force by a brilliant and industrious young scholar. He has gone beyond the archives to read widely in the public press, which commented on every move the Rothschilds made. Ferguson is essentially an economic historian, but he has great understanding for the characters who appear in his pages. The individual vignettes are vivid and compelling.
From Booklist
A British historian and political commentator, Ferguson is author of Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897^-1927 (1995). He also edited and contributed to Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (1997), a book that argues that the exploration of alternative outcomes to historical events is a legitimate form of scholarly inquiry. Here he returns to "historical reality" to trace the rise of the Rothschild financial empire. More than a dozen books have profiled the Rothschilds; but with the family's five branches and its vast wealth, power, and influence, there is much to chronicle. Each successive biographer has been granted access to more newly available family records, but Ferguson claims unprecedented and unrestricted access to all the surviving historical family and corporate documents. Included in the trove are more than 20,000 letters in four languages and 20 separate archives. Ferguson also enjoyed the cooperation of various of the Rothschilds who had opportunity to comment on his early manuscripts. So prodigious is Ferguson's definitive effort, it will require a second volume, expected next fall. David Rouse
From Kirkus Reviews
The fabulous history of a legendary family, reviled by many, lauded by many others, and fascinating to all, is told again, this time with encyclopedic exactitude. British scholar Ferguson (History/Oxford) has done exhaustive research, drawing on musty archives worldwide, and he uses long extracts from Rothschild family correspondence never before publicly presented. A generation ago, Frederick Morton's bestselling romantic history of the family evolved into a Broadway musical. No such transformation is likely for this massive work. This telling is businesslike and straightforward, which somehow emphasizes the storys inherent extravagant romance. There are, to be sure, extended passages dealing with financial transactions together with charts detailing, for example, such arcana as the ``weekly closing prices of 3 percent consols, 18281832.'' The scholarly analyses of old balance sheets and financial statements, however, give way to the complex story of how the founder and his five sons came to bestride the world of international finance, creating the modern government-bond market, underwriting the advent of railroads (the hot stocks of their day), bankrolling geopolitics, commanding swift communication, and fathering the art of public relations. The brothers and their sons were the very models of modern merchant bankers, all the while stubbornly retaining their Judaism and marrying only within their endogamous clan. They dealt democratically with the likes of Wellington and Metternich, Disraeli and Heine, Balzac and Rossini. Ferguson's mighty book closes with a Rothschild entering Cambridge while another takes his seat as a member of Parliament without the hitherto required oath of Christian fealty. It covers the first quarter of a history that began two centuries ago in the fetid ghetto of Frankfurt. (A second volume, bringing the tale to 1997, is promised for next year. Scholar and nonacademic alike will be pleased, indeed, if it's like the current text.) The latest definitive work on the marvelous Rothschilds, cogent and strong. (16 pages of photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Home
