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) I don’t intend to provide extension observations about each of these volumes. To do each one justice would require much more time than I can devote to the task. The author himself wrote that the creation of this history was much longer than planned for: I am not surprised given the wealth of material. Ferguson explains that the Rothschilds refused to finance wars for two reasons. The first was that the loser of the war inevitably defaulted on its loans. The second was that the winner was so weakened by the fight that it defaulted half the time. Thus in an era when governments depended on banks for financing, the opinions of the Rothschilds were of considerable importance. The Rothschilds were a key part of the system that prevented war in Europe for 100 years between Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and WWI. When Ferguson notes that after 1850s, the new banks began to achieve higher profitability than the Rothschilds he decides that their responsible lending habits have become excessively conservative. Apparently, Ferguson is so much in love with the myth in economics of the heroic risk-tasking entrepreneur that even irresponsible risk taking becomes praiseworthy. Having recently finished a biography of the Warburgs, I'm surprised at how little overlap there seems to be (I think they were mentioned just once in this book). However, since this one ends in 1848, it's still a bit early in the Warburg timeline. The second part might have more.

While many contemporaries noted the irony of Jewish bankers being the main prop for the the "Holy Alliance" of Catholic monarchies in the East, and the Protestant ones in the West, Ferguson shows that in fact if the Rothschild's had a bias towards anything it was towards peace, an expensive and armed peace they preferred, but peace nonetheless. They often also used their clout to demand increased rights for Jews and sometimes even more parliamentry democracy, which they thought stabilized investments. Perhaps the best part of the book is showing the Rothschild's participation in the tangled webs of international diplomacy at the time, where ideologies were attached to regimes and countries like in few later periods. Liberals tended to support French and Belgian claims in any circumstances, while reactionaries supported Austria and Prussia, and domestic politics often involved playing off different nations as much as different policies. On the whole, the Rothschild worked across these ideological lines, but they turned more Whig and liberal as time went on. The Rothschilds, it should be stressed, did not need to go to Cambridge, much mess Oxford, any more than they needed to sit in the House of Commons. The education of Rothschild children remained for most of the nineteenth century a much more cosmopolitan affair than the ancient English public schools and universities could provide. Thus the family continued to rely on private tutors and to send children abroad for a substantial part of their studies, to ensure above all that they maintained the family's multilingualism." (p. 43)There he began a business career that made him a respectable, if not prosperous man. As the years went on, he trained his five sons in business and began to establish them in the cities that would house the five branches of the family bank: Frankfurt (Amschel), London (Nathan), Naples (Carl), Vienna (Solomon), and Paris (James).

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.One of the reviewer's first tasks is to give to the prospective reader some sense of what the book contains. Wormell's attempt at this is to say the least perfunctory. The book, he writes, 'is bedded in the nineteenth-century Europe's diplomatic manoeuvrings, wars and preparations for wars'. So much for that. He devotes half a sentence to the central issue of the family's Judaism. He gives the reader almost no inkling of the contributions the book makes to the social, political and cultural history of nineteenth-century Europe. A major work of economic, social and political history, Niall Ferguson's The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker 1849-1999 is the second volume of the acclaimed, landmark history of the legendary Rothschild banking dynasty. 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 1998 by Business Week. if you want capital without interest, buy land. If you want your interest without capital, buy shares" (p. 428) Ferguson shows convincingly how a family of Frankfurt antique dealers ascended the hierarchy of finance during the Napoleanic wars to become the richest individuals in history. Thanks to Mayer Amschel's five sons scattered across Europe, in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Naples and Vienna, and their family creed of "Concordia," the Rothshcilds were able to trade bills, bullion, and subsidies across the continent for both the French, and, more importantly, the allies, who needed funds for their scattered campaigns. In the post-bellum period, alliances with such nabobs as the British Treasury member John Charles Herries and infamous reactionary Austrian diplomat Prince Metternich, both of whom the Rothschild offered rich personal subventions, allowed them to dominate the world of government bonds, and thus dictate many government policies, especially those regarding war and peace. This is a sprawling, fascinating, deep and finally difficult work of history, one that offers an original glance at the 19th century through the eyes of the family that financed much of it.