History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

Until the beginning of the revolutionary wars in France, in the mid-1790s, European merchant banking was dominated by non-Jews: the Barings of London, the Hopes of Amsterdam and the Gebruder Bethmann of Frankfurt. The war quickly expanded the money-raising market and so opened room for newcomers.10 Among them was a German–Jewish group – Oppenheims, Rothschilds, Heines, Mendelssohns. The Rothschild name derived from the sixteenth-century red shield on their house in the Frankfurt ghetto. The family patriarch, Mayer Amschel (1744–1812), was a money-changer who also traded in antiques and old coins. He branched into textiles, which meant a British connection, and from selling old coins to William IX, Elector of Hesse-Cassel, he became his main financial agent. The elector had made himself very rich by supplying mercenaries to the British army. So that was another English connection.