NIALL  FERGUSON

The House of Rothschild --Money's Prophets---1798--1848 ; Published by Viking ;Pages 648 ; Price Rs.1236 /-

                             *****************************

All of us are aware that the Suez Canal was constructed  when  the Prime Minister of England was Benjamin Disraeli. There was a major financial crisis and Disraeli appealed to his friend Nathan  Rothschild to help the Government. In 1875, the London banking house of N M Rothschild & Sons advanced the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, acting for the British Government, the vast sum of £4,000,000 to purchase Suez Canal shares. According to legend, this was transacted on a gentleman’s agreement, with no documentation, a technically unsecured loan for a sum of over £550 million today.

Niall  Ferguson  is an outstanding   historian and political commentator. He  is an authority on international history, economic and financial history, and British and American imperialism. He bagged the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism in 2013. He has 55 books to his credit including the popular "Ascent of Money " and "Kissinger" 

The book is a remarkable portrait of  the unique and unusual  Rothschild family.The author brings out  the secrets behind the family’s phenomenal achievements. We learn of the  family’s extensive  political network, endowing it  access to and influence over many of the greatest statesmen of the age. The family  became masters of the political universe. They dined with Disraeli and Gladstone, hunted with the Prince of Wales and helped engineer Napoleon III's impetuous marriage to the adventuress Eugenie de Montijo. They also devoted time and money for charity and worked hard enhance the civil and political rights of Jews.  Ferguson recounts, ''the origins of the state of Israel can . . . be traced back to a letter to Lord Rothschild.'' 

 Ferguson relates  a family saga, bringing out  the crucial role of Judaism in the lives of a dynasty that rose from the confines of the Frankfurt ghetto and later used its influence to assist oppressed Jews throughout Europe.

 This is  definitive work of solid scholarship combined with easy readability.It is a biography of the rarest kind, in which mysterious and fascinating historical figures finally spring to life.

 Anyone interested in finance, European history or the rise of one spectacularly successful Jewish family will find  this history of the Rothschilds spellbinding. Equipped with unprecedented access to pre-1915 Rothschild archives, the author  begins the family history with Frankfurt merchant Mayer Amschel.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 “Hero” It was largely because of this unique Genius 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.

Ferguson debunks myths and carefully reconstructs the truth. He has done a brilliant job of depicting this far-flung family  and  managed to offer an amazing insider's look at the financial, political and military aspects of early 19th-century European life.

 Ferguson makes their absorbing  story a seminar on the financial history of Europe. In their heyday, the Rothschilds practiced geopolitics on a grand scale. They arranged the tricky reparations following the Franco-Prussian conflict, were active in securing Suez for Victoria, and managed assets for the Vatican. Contrary to myth, they were generally pacifists. “While others unified nations, the Rothschilds were quietly unifying Europe,” using railroads as a binding factor. They demolished social barriers erected against Jews, hobnobbing easily with aristocracy and royalty. They joined the nobility themselves and acquired  castles and art in enormous  quantities. By the turn of the last century and the advent of the fifth generation, however, there was a decline in the Rothschilds’ fortunes. They had failed  to establish a foothold in the New World. Power was dispersed among numerous, often effete, cousins. Virulent anti-Semitism and two world wars left the family enterprises no more important than those of their numerous competitors.   

 Ferguson was granted access to the English branch of the family’s archives  including correspondence between the brothers. This correspondence was often of an incredibly sensitive nature and if it were to fall into the wrong hands would place the brothers at a distinct disadvantage, therefore the brothers wrote to each other in code but far worse, in Juden Deutsche, essentially German using Hebrew script, making it near impenetrable to most and for the writer something of a hurdle to overcome when translating!.

The volume  lays to rest many of the historical inaccuracies, myths and legends that surround the family and how it acquired its wealth .The brothers acquired their wealth and power primarily through the sale and purchase of government bonds which helped the finance of grand public works throughout the industrial revolution as they were located in each of the main European finance centres, thus enabling the creation of a cross border market for bonds, something otherwise hitherto unknown or dreamt of before.

The House of Rothschild became the first de facto multi-national merchant and investment bank and as such, they were able to become probably the wealthiest family in Europe in the 19th century. They stayed ever faithful to their religion and its followers throughout all of Europe and beyond.

The book is a great  example of a very well researched piece of historical work that  is easily accessible to the general public, whether they have a limited knowledge of finance or of events in the 19th century.

An outstanding piece of historical work  packed with information and written in an eminently readable style.

P.P.Ramachandran

16/06/2018.