Customer Reviews

House Of Rothschild Moneys Prophets 1798 To 1848

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Niall Ferguson has done a commendable job of describing the developement of a captivating family saga. What I found most appealing about the book is its comprehensive nature -- it weaves the family story in the context of the political and economic developments,with which it is closely intertwined. What is even more fascinating is the level of financial details about the bank than Ferguson provides. Perhaps it is his access to the recently open archive in Moscow that allows the author to deisclose finanacial history that it fascinating and detailed.

I would highly recommend this book to any serious student of history, as well as to people interested in banking and economics. Perhaps it may appear too detailed for the casual reader.

This book is about the rise of the House of Rothschild but it is not written for the casual reader of history. This is written for the scholar whose subject matter is economic history. As that is not my field of study, I found the book boring in the extreme (it took me two months to wade through it). However, for the student of Jewish history, it does have some interesting ideas as to the origins of some of the Nazi propaganda.

Ferguson (Oxford) presents a fascinating picture of the first two generations of the Rothschild family (Mayer Amschel and his five sons Amschel, Solomon, Nathan, Carl, and James), who laid the foundation for the family's banking fortune in the early 19th century. Ferguson attacks the myths surrounding the family and focuses on the nature of the partnership and the secret of its success. Intricately weaving together strands of familial, financial, and political history into a highly readable but complex narrative, the author presents a vivid picture of this Jewish family, which emerged from the Frankfurt ghetto to dominate European finance, particularly the international bond market, and which, despite its rise to unparalleled wealth and influence, never deserted Judaism. This massive, lucid, and captivating study rests largely on previously unexamined manuscript sources in Paris, London, Frankfurt, and Moscow, many written in German with Hebrew characters. These sources are meticulously documented in 140 pages of footnotes/bibliography within the 600-page text. It will remain the definitive account of the early history of the family. Highly recommended for scholars and general readers alike.

I think that a rich bibliography at the end of a good volume like this is necessary for every reader , from the lowest train-reader to the highest scholar. The fact is simple : the paperback edition lacks the BIBLIOGRAPHY !

Furgeson makes an interesting remark at the beginning of the book, to the effect that the book can be read in conjunction with Lenin's Imperialism book to judge whether in fact "finance capital" is fundamentally imperialist and also conservative, or supportive of the restoration regimes. With that in mind, I can't say that I read the entire book, but the answer is, from the parts that I did read, a decisive no. The Rothschilds, the embodiment of finance capital (to use a quaint phrase), were not belligerent, in fact they would not support wars because it depressed the value of their bonds. That said, they did support wars, and did so by financing them, and you can't have a foreign war without borrowing money. Moreover, the family did support restoration regimes, for instance, by selling German bonds in London denominated in English pounds, extending the life of the ancien regimes by a few years. They also exercised a good deal of power because they developed a communication system (runners and pigeons) used by all of the politicians, hence they profited by being at the center of the information flow, and were able to last for so long and so profitably through arbitrage, for example, one brother would by a security in France and another would sell it in London, pocketing the difference. So Lenin was right, Rothschild and "finance capital" was remarkably powerful, but they were not essentially conservative (thought they did support restoration regimes) nor bellicose and imperialist. I do admit to skipping most of the rest of the book, but the genre of "economic history" mixed with a good deal of politics and diplomatic history is very interesting, and more power to Furgeson for pulling it off so expertly.

Shame on Penguin and Mr. Ferguson for the paperback version which contains no bibliography and has abbreviated footnotes. Persons who buy paperbacks have as great a need for the appurtenances of scholarship as hardback buyers. Further it seems a travesty to publish a book with a revisionist flavor and leave out the underpinnings of the argument, a statement of sources. Not to mention splitting the book in two to gouge the US reader!