Nathan Mayer Rothschild and the Creation of a Dynasty: The Critical Years 1806-1816

This groundbreaking history explains how Nathan Mayer Rothschild rose from comparatively humble circumstances to become the founder of an extraordinary banking and financial empirean empire that remained preeminent in Europe for more than a century. The book focuses on the critical years of Great Britains war against Napoleon, when Rothschild became in effect Britains banker and paymaster on the Continent, contributing to Wellingtons defeat of Napoleon and consolidating the basis of the Rothschild financial dynasty. Although the basic outline of Rothschilds remarkable rise in the world of European high finance is well known, the details of how this actually took place, at the transaction-by-transaction level, have never before been studied. On the basis of painstaking archival examination of all of Rothschilds extant financial records, Kaplan is able to explain for the first time exactly how this transformation occurred.