XI The foundation of the English Rothschilds: N.M. Rothschild as a Textile Merchant 1799–1811

Abstract

There can be little doubt that more books have been written on the Rothschilds than on any other commercial family, but the extent of our knowledge of the family history is certainly not in proportion to the number of volumes published.¹ The legend of the Rothschilds' meteoric rise to fortune and fame was perhaps the first to grip the popular imagination in modern times, so that for every original writer there have been half a dozen others more interested in royalties than research. The most that can be said in exoneration of a century of Rothschild authors is that only two of them have had access to the family's huge and dispersed archives, and the remainder had little alternative but to garner what they could from state papers and their predecessors' work. Berghoffer had the advantage of the family's Frankfurt papers for his Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1922), while Bertrand Gille had free access to the firm's depleted Parisian papers for the two volumes of his La Maison Rothschild (1965). But these two sources have left a large gap in the middle of the family saga, the early career of Nathan Meyer Rothschild (1777–1836). All authorities acknowledge the pre-eminence of N.M. Rothschild (or N.M. as he was usually called), not only as the founder of the London house that still bears his name, but also as the leader of the whole family enterprise in the vigorous second generation, when the family fortune leaped from £80 000 in 1800 to £4 000 000 in 1825. Clearly it is this quarter of a century that deserves the sharpest focus, and the English branch of the business that must now attract the closest research.

Reprinted with permission from Textile History, 8, 1977.

Reprinted with permission from Textile History, 8, 1977.

Notes

Reprinted with permission from Textile History, 8, 1977.