The financial crisis of 1914 — which began in July, before the war itself broke out — was the biggest in history, bigger even than the crisis of 1929
Professional historians rarely have the funds (or the inclination) to engage in speculation themselves. (My boyhood hero, the great English diplomatic historian A.J.P. Taylor, was a financial dunce who fared disastrously in the 1970s inflation.)
They also tend to study the emperors, the kings and queens, the presidents and prime ministers, rather than the bankers and brokers. Writing the histories of some of the great German-Jewish banking dynasties, the Rothschilds and the Warburgs, I learned to see history from a different vantage point.
The story of how the Rothschild brothers profited from early news of the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo is the stuff of legend The reality is that Napoleon’s defeat, just 100 days after his return from exile on the island of Elba, was not at all what Nathan Rothschild had anticipated.
When the news of Bonaparte’s defeat reached the Rothschild offices in St Swithin’s Lane in London — delivered by a courier, not the carrier pigeon of legend — the brothers were therefore dismayed.
Niall Ferguson Bloomberg 20 February 2022
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