Free The House of Rothschild by Niall Ferguson

paradoxes of 1848: at a time when the Rothschilds were widely vilified by continental liberals as props of reaction, they were playing a leading role in an archetypal liberal campaign for legal equality in Britain. After all, Jewish emancipation was one of the achievements of the Frankfurt parliament, though it was subsequently rescinded in Frankfurt itself in 1852. Even Betty, that staunch Orléanist opponent of the revolution, had to admit it: “We Jews ought not ... to complain of this great movement and relocation of interests. Everywhere emancipation has brought down the chains of the Middle Ages, and has given back to these pariahs of fanaticism and intolerance the rights of humanity and equality. We should congratulate ourselves on this ...”
    Yet here too there is a need for qualification. Firstly, there were elements of the revolutionary movement, as we have seen, which were markedly anti-Jewish; indeed, violence against Jews was one of the phenomena which most disgusted the Rothschilds about the revolutions of 1848—9. Secondly, in some ways what was really at issue was the Rothschilds’ status within the British Jewish community. Rivalry with other members of the Jewish elite—notably David Salomons—was without doubt a strong motivating force. The reality was that for most poor Jews in Britain (and even more so on the continent) the notion of representation in Parliament was as remote as the notion of study at Cambridge. For all the rhetoric of collective struggle for Jewry, the Rothschilds were to some extent pursuing their own interests as a family—specifically, their own claim to be the “royal family” of Judaism.
    In the light of subsequent events, it is extraordinary to recall that in 1839 the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums had launched a bitter attack against the Rothschilds, accusing them of positively harming the cause of Jewish emancipation:
    Well we know to our dismay that the repulsive attitude towards the Jews in Germany, which had almost disappeared completely at the time of the Wars of Liberation, increased with the increase in the House of Rothschild; and that the latter’s great wealth and [that of] their partners have adversely affected the Jewish cause, so that as the former grew so the latter sank all the further ... We must sharply separate the Jewish cause from the whole House of Rothschild and their consorts.
    At the time, however, it did appear that the family had lost sight of the wider interests of European Jewry. It was not a Rothschild but one of their business rivals, David Salomons of the London & Westminster Bank, who in 1835 won an early victory for the cause of Jewish political rights in England by getting himself elected Sheriff of the City of London. In the process, he and his Whig supporters secured the passage of an act which abolished the requirement that an elected Sheriff sign a declaration containing the words “upon the true faith of a Christian.” It was not a Rothschild but Francis Henry Goldsmid who became the first Jew admitted to the Bar. It was not a Rothschild but an in-law, Moses Montefiore, who was knighted and then made a baronet, thus (as James put it) “raising the standing of the Jews in England.” It was not a Rothschild but Isaac Lyon Goldsmid who led the Jewish Association for Obtaining Civil Rights and Privileges.
    However, the Rothschilds took a renewed interest in the question of emancipation after the Damascus affair in 1840. The precedent set then of using Rothschild influence to improve conditions for Jews in the less tolerant states of Europe continued throughout the 1840s. In 1842 James went to see Guizot “concerning the Polish Jews,” while Anselm sought to orchestrate press opposition to new anti-Jewish measures proposed in Prussia. In 1844 “execrable” new measures proposed by Nicholas I to reduce still further the Jewish Pale (permitted area) of settlement and to bring the Russian Jews’ schools and communities under