February 23: House of Rothschild

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the patriarch of the Rothschild banking family and the pioneer of international finance, was born on this date in 1744 in the ghetto of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. By installing each of his five sons in a different European city, and by keeping his investment house in the family’s hands through carefully arranged marriages and other means, Rothschild created a financial empire that was impervious to local anti-Semitism and even to the will of individual monarchs. Throughout Europe, the Rothschilds financed the railway system and the continent’s industrialization and backed Great Britain in the Napoleonic Wars; throughout the rest of the world, they helped create the Suez Canal, financed Cecil Rhodes’ expeditions into Africa and the colonization of Rhodesia, funded the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War, and strongly influenced the outcome of the American Civil War by withholding support from the Confederacy, despite the European hunger for cotton. The Rothschilds held vast power throughout the 19^th century and achieved mythical status in the popular imagination — much of which leaned towards demonizing, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that remain current on the Internet today.

“Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet.” —Heinrich Heine