Nathan Mayer Rothschild | |
|---|---|
 1853 portrait | |
| Born | (1777-09-16)16 September 1777 Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire |
| Died | 28 July 1836(1836-07-28) (aged 58) Frankfurt, German Confederation |
| Known for | Rothschild banking family of England |
| Spouse | |
| Children |
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| Parent(s) | Mayer Amschel Rothschild Guttle Schnapper |
Nathan Mayer Rothschild (16 September 1777 – 28 July 1836), also known asBaron Nathan Mayer Rothschild,[1] was a British-German banker, businessman andfinancier. Born inFrankfurt am Main, he was the third of the five sons ofMayer Amschel Rothschild and his wife, Guttle (née Schnapper). He was the founder of theBritish branch of the prominentRothschild family.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild was born on 16 September 1777 toMayer Amschel Rothschild and Guttle Schnapper in theJewish ghetto area ofFrankfurt in theHoly Roman Empire (in present-dayGermany). He was born to anAshkenazi Jewish family. He was the third son, and his brothers wereAmschel Mayer Rothschild,Salomon Mayer Rothschild,Carl Mayer Rothschild andJames Mayer Rothschild. All five brothers would go on to become close business partners spread out across Europe. They had five sisters, including Henriette Rothschild, who marriedAbraham Montefiore.[2]
In 1798, at the age of 21, he settled inManchester, England, and established a business intextile trading and finance. He later moved toLondon and began dealing on theLondon Stock Exchange from 1804. He made a fortune in tradingbills of exchange through a banking enterprise begun in 1805, dealing with financial instruments such as foreign bills and government securities.[3]
Rothschild became afreemason of the Emulation Lodge, No. 21, of thePremier Grand Lodge of England on 24 October 1802, in London. Until this point, the fewAshkenazi Jews who lived in England tended to belong to the "Antients" on account of their generally lower social class, while the more establishedSephardim joined the Moderns.[4][5]
From 1809, Rothschild began to deal ingold bullion and developed this as a cornerstone of his business, which was to becomeN. M. Rothschild & Sons. From 1811 on, in negotiation withCommissary-GeneralJohn Charles Herries, he undertook to transfer money to payWellington's troops, on campaign inPortugal and Spain againstNapoleon, and later to make subsidy payments to British allies when these organized new troops after Napoleon's disastrousRussian campaign.[6]
Later, during the 1840s, as early socialists in France (such asAlphonse Toussenel andPierre Leroux) attacked the Rothschilds and "Jewish financiers" in general, a French socialist from among their circle,Georges Marie Mathieu-Dairnvaell using the penname "Satan",[7] authored a work entitledHistoire édifiante et curieuse de Rothschild Ier, Roi des Juifs ("Edifying and Curious History of Rothschild the First, King of the Jews"). Within it, he made claims about Nathan Mayer Rothschild's early knowledge of the outcome of theBattle of Waterloo, whose couriers delivered information about the victory back to London before the British Cabinet itself knew, claiming that he used this knowledge to speculate on theLondon Stock Exchange and make a vast fortune by unfair advantage against the other British stock holders, essentially defrauding them.[8]
Frederic Morton relates the story thus:[9]
To the Rothschilds, [England's] chief financial agents, Waterloo brought a many million pound scoop. ... a Rothschild agent ... jumped into a boat atOstend ... Nathan Rothschild ... let his eye fly over the lead paragraphs. A moment later he was on his way to London (beating Wellington's envoy by many hours) to tell the government thatNapoleon had been crushed: but his news was not believed, because the government had just heard of the English defeat atQuatre Bras. Then he proceeded to the Stock Exchange. Another man in his position would have sunk his work into consols [bank annuities], already weak because of Quatre Bras. But this was Nathan Rothschild. He leaned against "his" pillar. He did not invest. He sold. He dumpedconsols. ... Consols dropped still more. "Rothschild knows," the whisper rippled through the 'Change. "Waterloo is lost." Nathan kept on selling, ... consols plummeted – until, a split second before it was too late, Nathan suddenly bought a giant parcel for a song. Moments afterwards the great news broke, to send consols soaring. We cannot guess the number of hopes and savings wiped out by this engineered panic.
The Rothschild family[10] and others have claimed that this embellished version of events originated in Mathieu-Dairnvaell's 1846 writing, was further embellished by John Reeves in 1887 inThe Rothschilds: the Financial Rulers of Nations, and then repeated in other popular accounts like that of Morton and the 1934 American film directed by Alfred L. Werker,The House of Rothschild.[11]
HistorianNiall Ferguson agrees that the Rothschilds' couriers did get to London first and alerted the family to Napoleon's defeat, but argues that since the family had been banking on a protracted military campaign, the losses arising from the disruption to their business more than offset any short-term gains in bonds after Waterloo. Rothschild capital did soar, but over a much longer period: Nathan's breakthrough had been prior to Waterloo when he negotiated a deal to supply cash to Wellington's army. The family made huge profits over a number of years from this governmental financing by adopting a high-risk strategy involving exchange-rate transactions, bond-price speculations, and commissions.[12]
It is also very commonly reported that the Rothschilds' advanced information was caused by the speed of prized racing pigeons, held by the family.[13][14][15] However, this is widely disputed and the Rothschild archive states that, although pigeon post "was one of the tools of success in the Rothschild business strategy during the period c. 1820–1850,... it is likely that a series of couriers on horseback brought the news" of Waterloo to Rothschild.[16]
More recently,Brian Cathcart has refuted the claim that Rothschild was the first man in London to know of the victory at Waterloo.[17] He traces the earliest news to a dispatchWellington sent via his messenger toLord Bathurst, theSecretary of War, which was received on the evening of 21 June.[17]
Master of unbounded wealth, he boasts that he is the arbiter of peace and war, and that the credit of nations depends upon his nod; his correspondents are innumerable; his courtiers outrun those of sovereign princes, and absolute sovereigns; ministers of state are in his pay. Paramount in the cabinets of continental Europe, he aspires to the domination of our own.
In 1816, his four brothers were raised to the nobility (Adelung) by theEmperor of Austria. They were now permitted to prefix the Rothschild name with the particlevon, although outside the German-speaking world it was common practice across Europe to use the language of diplomacy, rendering names and titles in French, in this case:de.[19]
In 1818, he arranged a £5 million loan to thePrussian government and the issuing ofbonds for governmentloans formed a mainstay of his bank's business. He gained a position of such power in theCity of London that by 1825–1826 he was able to supply enough coin to theBank of England to enable it to avert aliquidity crisis.[20]
In 1822, all five brothers were granted the title of Baron, or raised to theFreiherrnstand, by the Emperor. From 1822, both Nathan Mayer himself, and any legitimate male descendant, could call himself:Freiherr von Rothschild, or in the language of diplomacy whether in France or not,Baron de Rothschild. In practice, having accepted thearistocratic title for the benefit of his family, he chose not to use it himself and so did not request official recognition of the title. In 1838, two years after his death,Queen Victoria did authorise the use of this Austrian title in the United Kingdom.[21]
In 1824, together with his brother-in-law,Sir Moses Montefiore, he founded theAlliance Assurance Company, which later merged with Sun Insurance to formSun Alliance.[22][23]
In the aftermath of theSlavery Abolition Act 1833 with theSlave Compensation Act 1837, Rothschild and his business partner Moses Montefiore loaned the British Government £15 million (worth £1.8 billion in 2023)[24] with interest which was subsequently paid off by the British taxpayers. This money was used to compensate the slave owners in theBritish Empire after slavery had been abolished. According to theLegacies of British Slave-Ownership at theUniversity College London, Rothschild himself was a successful claimant under the scheme[25] being a beneficiary as mortgage holder to a plantation in the colony ofAntigua (present dayAntigua and Barbuda) which included 158 enslavedBlack people. He received a £2,571 compensation payment, at the time (worth £308,196 in 2023)[24][26]
In 1835, he secured a contract with the Spanish Government giving him the rights to theAlmadén mines in southern Spain, effectively gaining a Europeanmercury monopoly.[27] In June 1836 he traveled to Frankfurt to attend his sonLionel's wedding, but became too ill to return home and died in Frankfurt at the age of 58 on 28 July as a result of an infectedabscess.[28]
His body was brought to London for burial, with the funeral procession on 8 August from his house onNew Court in theCity of London to theBrady Street Ashkenazi Cemetery inWhitechapel accompanied by three police Superintendents (those of theLondon City Police and ofH and K Divisions of the newMetropolitan Police),William Taylor Copeland (Lord Mayor of London) and contingents from theJews' Orphan Asylum and theJews' Free School, and the graveside address given by Chief RabbiSolomon Hirschell.[29] Nathan's wife Hannah was later buried alongside him.[30]
By the time of his death, his personal net worth amounted to 0.62% of British national income.[31] He had also secured the position of the Rothschilds as the preeminent investment bankers inBritain andEurope. His son,Lionel Nathan Rothschild, continued the family business in England. During his life, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, as the most accomplished of his brothers, solidified theRothschild family as a major power in European and thus world affairs. Their great rivals, theBaring family, said of Nathan Mayer and his family; "They are generally well planned, with great cleverness and adroitness in execution -- but he is in money and funds whatBonaparte was in war."[32]
The German poetHeinrich Heine, a Jewish convert to Lutheranism, declared "money is the God of our time and Rothschild is his prophet",[32] he described Nathan Mayer Rothschild as one of "three terroristic names that spell the gradual annihilation of the oldaristocracy", alongsideCardinal Richelieu andMaximilien Robespierre.[33] For Heine, Richelieu had destroyed the power of the old feudal aristocracy, Robespierre had "decapitated" its weakened remnant and now Rothschild signified the creation of a new social elite, as new lords of finance.[33] The financial system which the Rothschilds created during this period was viewed as a revolutionary development, with acosmopolitan emphasis, due to the high liquidity of assets in the new system based in bonds, instead of being based in land.[33]
On 22 October 1806 in London, he married Hannah Barent-Cohen, daughter ofLevy Barent Cohen and wife Lydia Diamantschleifer. Hannah Barent-Cohen was the aunt of Benjamin Frederik David Philips, the founder ofPhilips, andKarl Heinrich Marx. Hannah's sister, Judith Barent-Cohen, was the wife ofSir Moses Montefiore. Nathan and Hannah's children were:
Elizabeth Longford describes Nathan Mayer Rothschild as "a financier with prominent blue eyes, light reddish curls and an astute humorous expression."[34]
An anonymous contemporary described Nathan Rothschild at theLondon Stock Exchange as "he leaned against the 'Rothschild Pillar' ... hung his heavy hands into his pockets, and began to release silent, motionless, implacable cunning":[35]
Eyes are usually called the windows of the soul. But in Rothschild's case you would conclude that the windows are false ones, or that there was no soul to look out of them. There comes not one pencil of light from the interior, neither is there one gleam of that which comes from without reflected in any direction. The whole puts you in mind of an empty skin, and you wonder why it stands upright without at least something in it. By and by another figure comes up to it. It then steps two paces aside, and the most inquisitive glance that you ever saw, and more inquisitive than you would ever have thought of, is drawn out of those fixed and leaden eyes, as if one were drawing a sword from a scabbard. The visiting figure, which has the appearance of coming by accident and not by design, stops just a second or two, in the course of which looks are exchanged which, though you cannot translate, you feel must be of most important meaning. After this, the eyes are sheathed up again, and the figure resumes its stony posture.During the morning, numbers of visitors come, all of whom meet with a similar reception and vanish in a similar manner. Last of all the figure itself vanishes, leaving you utterly at a loss.[36]
Contrary to stories emanating from an article about the family in a late nineteenth-century magazine with decidedly antisemitic undertones, Rothschild's first concern on this occasion was not potential financial advantage; he and his courier immediately took the news to the Government.(Subscription,Wikipedia Library access orUK public library membership required.)
Montefiore was not just a businessman and Jewish activist, he was also Nathan Rothschild's brother-in-law.
