It's the story of perseverance, war, anti-Semitism, and the power of information.
In this episode, we'll be telling the story of the Rothschilds – a family that went from a cramped bedroom in a Jewish ghetto to being one of the most powerful families in Europe.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the Rothschilds.
[00:00:26] It’s the story of how one family went from a cramped bedroom in a Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt to being one of the most powerful, and certainly the richest, families in Europe.
[00:00:38] It’s a story of perseverance, finance, cunning, war, anti-Semitism, the power of information, secrecy and how to accumulate a simply vast amount of money.
[00:00:52] OK then, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:00:57] In 1846, a pamphlet was published in France. It was signed only “Satan”, the name of its true author not revealed.
[00:01:09] And it made a bold claim about an event that had happened 31 years beforehand, at the Battle of Waterloo.
[00:01:19] According to this pamphlet, a man called Nathan Rothschild was at The Battle of Waterloo.
[00:01:27] He was not a soldier, he wasn’t wielding a sword or gun or even commanding a regiment.
[00:01:34] Nathan Rothschild was a banker, the owner of the London branch of a large banking house called Rothschild, and the head of a pan-European banking conglomerate.
[00:01:47] Rothschild, according to the pamphlet, was waiting eagerly to see which direction the battle went.
[00:01:55] Would Napoleon’s French army emerge victorious?
[00:01:59] Or would the British-led coalition defeat the French?
[00:02:04] Rothschild wasn’t there merely out of curiosity, as a spectator.
[00:02:09] The result of the battle would have a large knock-on effect on the future of France, Britain, and even Europe more widely.
[00:02:19] And it would also have a large effect on the price of British government bonds, British national debt.
[00:02:29] As you will know, wars are expensive, and the British government borrowed heavily to finance this extensive military campaign.
[00:02:39] If Napoleon won the battle, the price of British government debt would drop, as investors would become worried about the British government’s continued ability to repay its obligations, to continue to pay the people who had lent it money.
[00:02:55] But if Napoleon lost, the opposite would happen. This debt would be considered less risky, investors would want to buy more of it, and the price of British government debt would rise.
[00:03:10] A lot was riding on the result.
[00:03:14] Nathan Rothschild, so the pamphlet alleged, was watching the battle so that he would learn the result firsthand, rather than wait for it to be printed in the newspapers.
[00:03:27] As soon as it became clear that Napoleon had been defeated, Rothschild got on a fast horse, rushed to the Belgian coast with the aim of boarding the first ship to England.
[00:03:40] But to his horror he found that there had been a terrible storm and all ships had been ordered not to go out to sea.
[00:03:50] He asked around, looking for anyone who would be able to transport him across the sea to England. Money was no object, the banker added, no price was too high.
[00:04:04] Eventually he found a fisherman who was willing to do it. He paid him handsomely, and the pair set off across the stormy sea for the coast of England.
[00:04:16] Rothschild arrived in London before any news of the result of the battle had reached the city.
[00:04:23] The reason he was in such a hurry was not because he wanted to be the first person to break the good news to the king or to the Prime Minister; it was because he sensed a once-in-a-lifetime money-making opportunity.
[00:04:38] He went straight to the stock market, the pamphlet alleged, and bought up as much government debt as he could get his hands on. When the news of Napoleon's defeat finally reached the capital, a full 24 hours after Rothschild had arrived, the price of British debt soared and Rothschild made 20 million francs, a gargantuan, vast amount of money.
[00:05:07] The story in the pamphlet went the 19th century equivalent of viral, and was translated into a bunch of different languages.
[00:05:16] And the legend of what happened even got adapted over the years.
[00:05:21] In one version Rothschild actually started selling debt to make people think that Britain had lost, and because he was such a well-respected financier people saw what he was doing and thought “Rothschild must know something”, so they started selling their debt too, and the price continued to fall.
[00:05:40] And at the last minute, just before the news of Napoleon's defeat broke, Rothschild swooped in and bought it all up, making himself an even bigger fortune in the process
[00:05:52] It is a great story, but the problem is that the story in the pamphlet simply isn’t true, at least in its original format.
[00:06:03] Nathan Rothschild wasn’t at the Battle of Waterloo, he didn’t rush back to England, there’s no evidence that he bought lots of debt, and by the time the pamphlet was published, Rothschild had died, so there was no possible way to conclusively refute the story.
[00:06:21] It turned out that the author of the pamphlet, so-called “Satan” was an anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist left wing journalist called Georges Dairnvall and the entire story had been invented to stir up discontent and increase animosity towards Jews, especially wealthy Jews such as Nathan Rothschild.
[00:06:44] Now, you may accuse me of doing the same thing by repeating the story here, but the reason to start with the story told in this pamphlet is because it touches on some of the key themes of the Rothschild family: the value of information, the link between war and money, the invention of government debt, and the prejudice that the family faced as Jews.
[00:07:11] And to tell the story of the Rothschild family, we must in fact start in a Jewish ghetto, the ghetto of Frankfurt.
[00:07:21] It was here that the father of the Rothschild dynasty, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, was born in 1744.
[00:07:30] Mayer Rothschild was initially a coin dealer, buying and selling coins, but he got his big break managing the financial affairs of William IX of Hesse, who was a wealthy German ruler.
[00:07:45] As you may know, throughout much of European history, Jews faced multiple restrictions on what they could and couldn’t do.
[00:07:55] Now, this varied by country and by ruler, but Jews were often not allowed to own land or become tradespeople like carpenters or blacksmiths, or to hold public office or to practise medicine.
[00:08:10] Jewish people weren’t allowed to do an awful lot, but the one thing that they were allowed to do was to lend money with interest.
[00:08:20] The Catholic Church forbade Christians from doing this, saying that it was usury, and it wasn’t allowed by the Bible.
[00:08:29] But Jewish people were not bound by the same restrictions.
[00:08:35] As a result, with few other options to participate in medieval society and with a clear need that could be filled, many Jewish people found opportunity in the money lending industry, lending out money to people and charging interest.
[00:08:52] It turned out that the Jewish community was well-placed to do this; Jewish people were spread throughout Europe, there were high levels of trust and pre-existing trade links between Jews in different cities and countries, so there was a lot of existing infrastructure, we could say, that already existed within the Jewish community.
[00:09:15] And by the time of Mayer Rothschild in the 18th century, the finance industry was well-developed within the Jewish community.
[00:09:24] But this was a double-edged sword.
[00:09:28] On the one hand, Jews were providing a valuable service, lending money to people who needed it, and being paid interest or commissions in return.
[00:09:39] As is still the case today, the finance industry can be lucrative, you can make a lot of money dealing with money, but on the flip side, this led to jealousy, suspicion and antisemitism, prejudice towards Jews who were perceived as having some kind of suspicious talent for making money and growing rich.
[00:10:02] Now, that’s some very brief background, but that is the backdrop for everything that's about to happen.
[00:10:10] To bring it back to the Rothschilds, Mayer Rothschild, the head of the family, became the choice financier for this man called William IX, who had made his fortune essentially hiring out his citizens as mercenaries, as soldiers for hire.
[00:10:29] Rothschild managed his patron’s wealth, doing everything from making sure that Napoleon didn’t get his hands on it through to investing it and growing his fortune.
[00:10:39] Mayer Rothschild himself grew very wealthy, but this was only sowing the seeds for what was to come.
[00:10:48] Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s most important legacy, his most profitable investment you might even say, was his family.
[00:10:57] He had 11 children, six daughters and five sons.
[00:11:03] Unfortunately the daughters don’t have much of a role to play in this story, but the five sons do.
[00:11:11] Mayer Rothschild decided to go from private banker of a wealthy German to the head of what would become the most successful banking partnership in Europe, and to do this he needed the help of his children.
[00:11:26] He sent each of his five sons to a centre of European finance, instructing them to go there and set up operations.
[00:11:36] The oldest, Amschel Mayer Rothschild, stayed in Frankfurt.
[00:11:40] The second, Salomon, went to Vienna.
[00:11:43] The third, Nathan, to England.
[00:11:46] The fourth, Carl, to Naples.
[00:11:48] And the fifth, James, went to Paris.
[00:11:52] There, they were instructed to set up business under the Rothschild name, Rothschild banks, essentially. Each bank would offer financial services to the people and rulers of the kingdom.
[00:12:07] But, of course, we aren’t talking about a baker or a blacksmith keeping a few hundred Francs with the Rothschilds. We are talking about high finance, raising capital for companies, and most importantly, raising money for countries.
[00:12:22] This all happened at the start of the 19th century, in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars.
[00:12:29] Wars are expensive, soldiers need to be paid, guns and ammunition bought.
[00:12:35] Historically, wars were typically paid for by raising taxes or simply forcing peasants to become soldiers and join the army.
[00:12:44] Clearly, both of those options are unpopular, as nobody likes taxes going up or being forced to risk their life on the battlefield.
[00:12:54] Another option was selling off pieces of land, but that wasn’t something a ruler typically wanted to do.
[00:13:02] But, when it came to the 19th century and with the pan-European banking network that the Rothschild sons had built up, there was an alternative.
[00:13:12] The Rothschilds, with their base in five different European countries and their extensive network of wealthy individuals, could offer governments loans, essentially, to fight wars.
[00:13:25] A government could go to one of the Rothschild brothers and say, hey, we need a load of money to fight this war, can you get it for us? And the Rothschilds would say, “sure”, they would go to wealthy individuals all over Europe and say “we have this great investment opportunity”, and investors would loan the government money, all enabled through the Rothschild banking network.
[00:13:50] The government would pay interest, the investors would be happy, and the Rothschilds would make a fee for facilitating the service.
[00:13:58] What’s more, the Rothschilds allowed investors to buy and sell their debt through their banks, making it a much more attractive investment because it was more easily tradable than ever before.
[00:14:11] And it was considered relatively low risk, because you were dealing with the government after all.
[00:14:18] It might sound like a basic thing to say, given that the global bond market is now worth literally hundreds of trillions of dollars, but it’s hard to overstate how important this innovation was, not just for governments but for the economy overall.
[00:14:35] Before this, there were very limited opportunities for people with money to invest it and make more money. There was, in some countries, some form of stock market, but these were characterised by booms and busts, and the idea of a publicly-listed company, an Amazon or Apple, that people could invest in, this was undeveloped.
[00:15:00] For most wealthy people, most potential investors, the only place to invest money was in land, and that had limited opportunity for a return.
[00:15:13] Through government bonds, investors could invest in the government, essentially, guaranteeing themselves a secure annual return, so long as the government didn’t go bust that was.
[00:15:25] And this brings us on to another very important element of the Rothschilds’ success: information.
[00:15:33] You heard in the story at the start of the episode about the allegation that Nathan had profited from learning the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo before anyone else.
[00:15:44] That is now believed to be completely false, but what is certainly true is that the Rothchild family had an extensive information network, with their own system of couriers, and even allegedly a system of homing pigeons, which ensured that it was always up to date with anything that might affect the price of its investments.
[00:16:06] If there was a result of a battle or a death of a monarch, or an invasion of a new territory, anything that might affect the creditworthiness of a government’s debt, and therefore its price, the Rothschilds had a sophisticated network that meant that it would know about it before anyone else, so that it could either make money or avoid losing money.
[00:16:29] What’s more, the Rothschild banking network became a hugely valuable partner to European governments, especially the British government, because of its ability to transfer money.
[00:16:43] In the modern era of being able to pick up your smartphone and send money anywhere in the world, it’s perhaps hard to imagine quite how important this was, but imagine you were the British government at the start of the 19th century.
[00:16:58] You have tens of thousands of soldiers fighting in France and Spain.
[00:17:03] They need to be paid.
[00:17:06] How do you do it? How does the money go from the British government in London through to a soldier in some field in Spain?
[00:17:16] This is where the Rothschilds came in.
[00:17:19] With their extensive network of banks in five different countries, and their access to different currencies as well as gold, they could facilitate all of this.
[00:17:30] The British government might pay the London branch of Rothschild in British pounds, the London branch would then arrange for this to be exchanged to gold bullion, transported via ship to Spain, exchanged with a local partner into currency that the soldiers could use, so that the soldiers could be paid.
[00:17:50] Now, you might have noticed that I said “might pay”, not “paid”, as how the Rothschilds managed to do this is still a little bit of a mystery, it’s a closed book.
[00:18:04] Even the biographers and historians of the Rothschild family don’t have access to the details of exactly how the family did it, but they soon became the go-to financial partner for European powers needing to move large amounts of money around.
[00:18:22] Now, as to exactly how much money the family made, which members of the family made it, and when this was made, this is also not public information, and is a subject of disagreement even with Rothschild biographers and historians.
[00:18:40] While Nathan, the head of the London branch, is probably the most famous of the brothers and the one that many people would say was the most savvy, and brought the most profits to the family, a critically acclaimed relatively recent biography by the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson claims that, although Nathan was the undisputed leader of the brothers and it was his London branch that had the first big success, the fortune was created more equally, with all five of the brothers pulling their weight.
[00:19:14] In any case, the fortune was vast.
[00:19:18] According to Ferguson’s biography, “When Nathan died in 1836, his personal fortune was equivalent to 0.62 per cent of British national income.”
[00:19:31] In other words, one individual, who had come to Britain in his twenties, had accumulated a fortune of nearly 1% of the total income in the country. If someone was to have a similar fortune today, it would be something like 20 billion Euro.
[00:19:51] And, as you might imagine, the family bought up and built huge mansions and palaces all over Europe. By the end of the 19th century, this luxury property portfolio of the family consisted of almost 50 palaces across Europe'.
[00:20:08] It is quite astounding, and what is perhaps even more astounding is that the Rothschild family has not only managed to not lose this vast fortune, but, with some exceptions, subsequent generations of Rothschilds have shown a remarkable talent for growing it.
[00:20:28] Of course, given that the family started in the late 18th century with five brothers, and is now going on 10 generations, the Rothschild dynasty is vast, linked through marriage with European royalty, spread out through Europe and involved in all manner of different businesses and industries.
[00:20:47] But it is still remarkably tight, facilitated by a lot of intermarriage, so things are kept “in the family”.
[00:20:56] The bread and butter of the Rothschilds is still in the world of high finance, both offering financial services and managing the vast Rothschild fortune.
[00:21:07] But the Rothschilds have spread out beyond the world of finance, they are also involved in property, oil and gas, luxury yachts, and if you are a wine lover you will no doubt have heard of the famous and very expensive Château Lafite Rothschild and Château Mouton Rothschild.
[00:21:25] The point is, the influence of the Rothschild family is vast, and this, combined with the underlying antisemitism that the family has dealt with its entire life, this has led it to being the subject of all sorts of conspiracy theories. These range from the Rothschilds artificially creating wars in the 19th century to profit from them through to the family controlling the weather, so that they can make money from knowing whether it will rain or shine tomorrow.
[00:21:54] There are images shared on social media claiming that the Rothschild family owns some ridiculous amount of the world’s wealth, I found one claiming that it is 80% of all money in the world that is owned by the Rothschilds.
[00:22:09] It is certainly an alluring theory, that there is some incredibly secretive rich family somewhere that controls the flow of money, that is pulling the strings of every politician and can make or break the fortunes of a country with the click of its fingers.
[00:22:24] But, much like the pamphlet alleging Nathan Rothschild was at Waterloo, it is simply not true.
[00:22:32] Estimates of the Rothschild family wealth vary, but they typically have it at somewhere in the tens of billions through to the hundreds of billions.
[00:22:41] So, to wrap things up, the Rothschild story is a tale of family unity, financial acumen, and adaptation through the centuries.
[00:22:51] It's a story that has intermingled with European history, politics, and business in myriad ways, leaving an indelible mark on the continent and beyond.
[00:23:01] And to think, it all started with five brothers in a tiny cramped bedroom in a Frankfurt ghetto.
[00:23:10] OK then, that is it for today's little exploration of The Rothschilds. There is so much more to say on this, tens of thousands of pages have been written on the subject, so I think this is certainly a topic to revisit and dive into in slightly more detail in a future episode.
[00:23:27] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:23:30] Have you heard of the Rothschilds before? What does the name “Rothschild” mean in your country?
[00:23:36] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:23:39] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:47] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:52] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the Rothschilds.
[00:00:26] It’s the story of how one family went from a cramped bedroom in a Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt to being one of the most powerful, and certainly the richest, families in Europe.
[00:00:38] It’s a story of perseverance, finance, cunning, war, anti-Semitism, the power of information, secrecy and how to accumulate a simply vast amount of money.
[00:00:52] OK then, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:00:57] In 1846, a pamphlet was published in France. It was signed only “Satan”, the name of its true author not revealed.
[00:01:09] And it made a bold claim about an event that had happened 31 years beforehand, at the Battle of Waterloo.
[00:01:19] According to this pamphlet, a man called Nathan Rothschild was at The Battle of Waterloo.
[00:01:27] He was not a soldier, he wasn’t wielding a sword or gun or even commanding a regiment.
[00:01:34] Nathan Rothschild was a banker, the owner of the London branch of a large banking house called Rothschild, and the head of a pan-European banking conglomerate.
[00:01:47] Rothschild, according to the pamphlet, was waiting eagerly to see which direction the battle went.
[00:01:55] Would Napoleon’s French army emerge victorious?
[00:01:59] Or would the British-led coalition defeat the French?
[00:02:04] Rothschild wasn’t there merely out of curiosity, as a spectator.
[00:02:09] The result of the battle would have a large knock-on effect on the future of France, Britain, and even Europe more widely.
[00:02:19] And it would also have a large effect on the price of British government bonds, British national debt.
[00:02:29] As you will know, wars are expensive, and the British government borrowed heavily to finance this extensive military campaign.
[00:02:39] If Napoleon won the battle, the price of British government debt would drop, as investors would become worried about the British government’s continued ability to repay its obligations, to continue to pay the people who had lent it money.
[00:02:55] But if Napoleon lost, the opposite would happen. This debt would be considered less risky, investors would want to buy more of it, and the price of British government debt would rise.
[00:03:10] A lot was riding on the result.
[00:03:14] Nathan Rothschild, so the pamphlet alleged, was watching the battle so that he would learn the result firsthand, rather than wait for it to be printed in the newspapers.
[00:03:27] As soon as it became clear that Napoleon had been defeated, Rothschild got on a fast horse, rushed to the Belgian coast with the aim of boarding the first ship to England.
[00:03:40] But to his horror he found that there had been a terrible storm and all ships had been ordered not to go out to sea.
[00:03:50] He asked around, looking for anyone who would be able to transport him across the sea to England. Money was no object, the banker added, no price was too high.
[00:04:04] Eventually he found a fisherman who was willing to do it. He paid him handsomely, and the pair set off across the stormy sea for the coast of England.
[00:04:16] Rothschild arrived in London before any news of the result of the battle had reached the city.
[00:04:23] The reason he was in such a hurry was not because he wanted to be the first person to break the good news to the king or to the Prime Minister; it was because he sensed a once-in-a-lifetime money-making opportunity.
[00:04:38] He went straight to the stock market, the pamphlet alleged, and bought up as much government debt as he could get his hands on. When the news of Napoleon's defeat finally reached the capital, a full 24 hours after Rothschild had arrived, the price of British debt soared and Rothschild made 20 million francs, a gargantuan, vast amount of money.
[00:05:07] The story in the pamphlet went the 19th century equivalent of viral, and was translated into a bunch of different languages.
[00:05:16] And the legend of what happened even got adapted over the years.
[00:05:21] In one version Rothschild actually started selling debt to make people think that Britain had lost, and because he was such a well-respected financier people saw what he was doing and thought “Rothschild must know something”, so they started selling their debt too, and the price continued to fall.
[00:05:40] And at the last minute, just before the news of Napoleon's defeat broke, Rothschild swooped in and bought it all up, making himself an even bigger fortune in the process
[00:05:52] It is a great story, but the problem is that the story in the pamphlet simply isn’t true, at least in its original format.
[00:06:03] Nathan Rothschild wasn’t at the Battle of Waterloo, he didn’t rush back to England, there’s no evidence that he bought lots of debt, and by the time the pamphlet was published, Rothschild had died, so there was no possible way to conclusively refute the story.
[00:06:21] It turned out that the author of the pamphlet, so-called “Satan” was an anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist left wing journalist called Georges Dairnvall and the entire story had been invented to stir up discontent and increase animosity towards Jews, especially wealthy Jews such as Nathan Rothschild.
[00:06:44] Now, you may accuse me of doing the same thing by repeating the story here, but the reason to start with the story told in this pamphlet is because it touches on some of the key themes of the Rothschild family: the value of information, the link between war and money, the invention of government debt, and the prejudice that the family faced as Jews.
[00:07:11] And to tell the story of the Rothschild family, we must in fact start in a Jewish ghetto, the ghetto of Frankfurt.
[00:07:21] It was here that the father of the Rothschild dynasty, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, was born in 1744.
[00:07:30] Mayer Rothschild was initially a coin dealer, buying and selling coins, but he got his big break managing the financial affairs of William IX of Hesse, who was a wealthy German ruler.
[00:07:45] As you may know, throughout much of European history, Jews faced multiple restrictions on what they could and couldn’t do.
[00:07:55] Now, this varied by country and by ruler, but Jews were often not allowed to own land or become tradespeople like carpenters or blacksmiths, or to hold public office or to practise medicine.
[00:08:10] Jewish people weren’t allowed to do an awful lot, but the one thing that they were allowed to do was to lend money with interest.
[00:08:20] The Catholic Church forbade Christians from doing this, saying that it was usury, and it wasn’t allowed by the Bible.
[00:08:29] But Jewish people were not bound by the same restrictions.
[00:08:35] As a result, with few other options to participate in medieval society and with a clear need that could be filled, many Jewish people found opportunity in the money lending industry, lending out money to people and charging interest.
[00:08:52] It turned out that the Jewish community was well-placed to do this; Jewish people were spread throughout Europe, there were high levels of trust and pre-existing trade links between Jews in different cities and countries, so there was a lot of existing infrastructure, we could say, that already existed within the Jewish community.
[00:09:15] And by the time of Mayer Rothschild in the 18th century, the finance industry was well-developed within the Jewish community.
[00:09:24] But this was a double-edged sword.
[00:09:28] On the one hand, Jews were providing a valuable service, lending money to people who needed it, and being paid interest or commissions in return.
[00:09:39] As is still the case today, the finance industry can be lucrative, you can make a lot of money dealing with money, but on the flip side, this led to jealousy, suspicion and antisemitism, prejudice towards Jews who were perceived as having some kind of suspicious talent for making money and growing rich.
[00:10:02] Now, that’s some very brief background, but that is the backdrop for everything that's about to happen.
[00:10:10] To bring it back to the Rothschilds, Mayer Rothschild, the head of the family, became the choice financier for this man called William IX, who had made his fortune essentially hiring out his citizens as mercenaries, as soldiers for hire.
[00:10:29] Rothschild managed his patron’s wealth, doing everything from making sure that Napoleon didn’t get his hands on it through to investing it and growing his fortune.
[00:10:39] Mayer Rothschild himself grew very wealthy, but this was only sowing the seeds for what was to come.
[00:10:48] Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s most important legacy, his most profitable investment you might even say, was his family.
[00:10:57] He had 11 children, six daughters and five sons.
[00:11:03] Unfortunately the daughters don’t have much of a role to play in this story, but the five sons do.
[00:11:11] Mayer Rothschild decided to go from private banker of a wealthy German to the head of what would become the most successful banking partnership in Europe, and to do this he needed the help of his children.
[00:11:26] He sent each of his five sons to a centre of European finance, instructing them to go there and set up operations.
[00:11:36] The oldest, Amschel Mayer Rothschild, stayed in Frankfurt.
[00:11:40] The second, Salomon, went to Vienna.
[00:11:43] The third, Nathan, to England.
[00:11:46] The fourth, Carl, to Naples.
[00:11:48] And the fifth, James, went to Paris.
[00:11:52] There, they were instructed to set up business under the Rothschild name, Rothschild banks, essentially. Each bank would offer financial services to the people and rulers of the kingdom.
[00:12:07] But, of course, we aren’t talking about a baker or a blacksmith keeping a few hundred Francs with the Rothschilds. We are talking about high finance, raising capital for companies, and most importantly, raising money for countries.
[00:12:22] This all happened at the start of the 19th century, in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars.
[00:12:29] Wars are expensive, soldiers need to be paid, guns and ammunition bought.
[00:12:35] Historically, wars were typically paid for by raising taxes or simply forcing peasants to become soldiers and join the army.
[00:12:44] Clearly, both of those options are unpopular, as nobody likes taxes going up or being forced to risk their life on the battlefield.
[00:12:54] Another option was selling off pieces of land, but that wasn’t something a ruler typically wanted to do.
[00:13:02] But, when it came to the 19th century and with the pan-European banking network that the Rothschild sons had built up, there was an alternative.
[00:13:12] The Rothschilds, with their base in five different European countries and their extensive network of wealthy individuals, could offer governments loans, essentially, to fight wars.
[00:13:25] A government could go to one of the Rothschild brothers and say, hey, we need a load of money to fight this war, can you get it for us? And the Rothschilds would say, “sure”, they would go to wealthy individuals all over Europe and say “we have this great investment opportunity”, and investors would loan the government money, all enabled through the Rothschild banking network.
[00:13:50] The government would pay interest, the investors would be happy, and the Rothschilds would make a fee for facilitating the service.
[00:13:58] What’s more, the Rothschilds allowed investors to buy and sell their debt through their banks, making it a much more attractive investment because it was more easily tradable than ever before.
[00:14:11] And it was considered relatively low risk, because you were dealing with the government after all.
[00:14:18] It might sound like a basic thing to say, given that the global bond market is now worth literally hundreds of trillions of dollars, but it’s hard to overstate how important this innovation was, not just for governments but for the economy overall.
[00:14:35] Before this, there were very limited opportunities for people with money to invest it and make more money. There was, in some countries, some form of stock market, but these were characterised by booms and busts, and the idea of a publicly-listed company, an Amazon or Apple, that people could invest in, this was undeveloped.
[00:15:00] For most wealthy people, most potential investors, the only place to invest money was in land, and that had limited opportunity for a return.
[00:15:13] Through government bonds, investors could invest in the government, essentially, guaranteeing themselves a secure annual return, so long as the government didn’t go bust that was.
[00:15:25] And this brings us on to another very important element of the Rothschilds’ success: information.
[00:15:33] You heard in the story at the start of the episode about the allegation that Nathan had profited from learning the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo before anyone else.
[00:15:44] That is now believed to be completely false, but what is certainly true is that the Rothchild family had an extensive information network, with their own system of couriers, and even allegedly a system of homing pigeons, which ensured that it was always up to date with anything that might affect the price of its investments.
[00:16:06] If there was a result of a battle or a death of a monarch, or an invasion of a new territory, anything that might affect the creditworthiness of a government’s debt, and therefore its price, the Rothschilds had a sophisticated network that meant that it would know about it before anyone else, so that it could either make money or avoid losing money.
[00:16:29] What’s more, the Rothschild banking network became a hugely valuable partner to European governments, especially the British government, because of its ability to transfer money.
[00:16:43] In the modern era of being able to pick up your smartphone and send money anywhere in the world, it’s perhaps hard to imagine quite how important this was, but imagine you were the British government at the start of the 19th century.
[00:16:58] You have tens of thousands of soldiers fighting in France and Spain.
[00:17:03] They need to be paid.
[00:17:06] How do you do it? How does the money go from the British government in London through to a soldier in some field in Spain?
[00:17:16] This is where the Rothschilds came in.
[00:17:19] With their extensive network of banks in five different countries, and their access to different currencies as well as gold, they could facilitate all of this.
[00:17:30] The British government might pay the London branch of Rothschild in British pounds, the London branch would then arrange for this to be exchanged to gold bullion, transported via ship to Spain, exchanged with a local partner into currency that the soldiers could use, so that the soldiers could be paid.
[00:17:50] Now, you might have noticed that I said “might pay”, not “paid”, as how the Rothschilds managed to do this is still a little bit of a mystery, it’s a closed book.
[00:18:04] Even the biographers and historians of the Rothschild family don’t have access to the details of exactly how the family did it, but they soon became the go-to financial partner for European powers needing to move large amounts of money around.
[00:18:22] Now, as to exactly how much money the family made, which members of the family made it, and when this was made, this is also not public information, and is a subject of disagreement even with Rothschild biographers and historians.
[00:18:40] While Nathan, the head of the London branch, is probably the most famous of the brothers and the one that many people would say was the most savvy, and brought the most profits to the family, a critically acclaimed relatively recent biography by the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson claims that, although Nathan was the undisputed leader of the brothers and it was his London branch that had the first big success, the fortune was created more equally, with all five of the brothers pulling their weight.
[00:19:14] In any case, the fortune was vast.
[00:19:18] According to Ferguson’s biography, “When Nathan died in 1836, his personal fortune was equivalent to 0.62 per cent of British national income.”
[00:19:31] In other words, one individual, who had come to Britain in his twenties, had accumulated a fortune of nearly 1% of the total income in the country. If someone was to have a similar fortune today, it would be something like 20 billion Euro.
[00:19:51] And, as you might imagine, the family bought up and built huge mansions and palaces all over Europe. By the end of the 19th century, this luxury property portfolio of the family consisted of almost 50 palaces across Europe'.
[00:20:08] It is quite astounding, and what is perhaps even more astounding is that the Rothschild family has not only managed to not lose this vast fortune, but, with some exceptions, subsequent generations of Rothschilds have shown a remarkable talent for growing it.
[00:20:28] Of course, given that the family started in the late 18th century with five brothers, and is now going on 10 generations, the Rothschild dynasty is vast, linked through marriage with European royalty, spread out through Europe and involved in all manner of different businesses and industries.
[00:20:47] But it is still remarkably tight, facilitated by a lot of intermarriage, so things are kept “in the family”.
[00:20:56] The bread and butter of the Rothschilds is still in the world of high finance, both offering financial services and managing the vast Rothschild fortune.
[00:21:07] But the Rothschilds have spread out beyond the world of finance, they are also involved in property, oil and gas, luxury yachts, and if you are a wine lover you will no doubt have heard of the famous and very expensive Château Lafite Rothschild and Château Mouton Rothschild.
[00:21:25] The point is, the influence of the Rothschild family is vast, and this, combined with the underlying antisemitism that the family has dealt with its entire life, this has led it to being the subject of all sorts of conspiracy theories. These range from the Rothschilds artificially creating wars in the 19th century to profit from them through to the family controlling the weather, so that they can make money from knowing whether it will rain or shine tomorrow.
[00:21:54] There are images shared on social media claiming that the Rothschild family owns some ridiculous amount of the world’s wealth, I found one claiming that it is 80% of all money in the world that is owned by the Rothschilds.
[00:22:09] It is certainly an alluring theory, that there is some incredibly secretive rich family somewhere that controls the flow of money, that is pulling the strings of every politician and can make or break the fortunes of a country with the click of its fingers.
[00:22:24] But, much like the pamphlet alleging Nathan Rothschild was at Waterloo, it is simply not true.
[00:22:32] Estimates of the Rothschild family wealth vary, but they typically have it at somewhere in the tens of billions through to the hundreds of billions.
[00:22:41] So, to wrap things up, the Rothschild story is a tale of family unity, financial acumen, and adaptation through the centuries.
[00:22:51] It's a story that has intermingled with European history, politics, and business in myriad ways, leaving an indelible mark on the continent and beyond.
[00:23:01] And to think, it all started with five brothers in a tiny cramped bedroom in a Frankfurt ghetto.
[00:23:10] OK then, that is it for today's little exploration of The Rothschilds. There is so much more to say on this, tens of thousands of pages have been written on the subject, so I think this is certainly a topic to revisit and dive into in slightly more detail in a future episode.
[00:23:27] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:23:30] Have you heard of the Rothschilds before? What does the name “Rothschild” mean in your country?
[00:23:36] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:23:39] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:47] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:52] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the Rothschilds.
[00:00:26] It’s the story of how one family went from a cramped bedroom in a Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt to being one of the most powerful, and certainly the richest, families in Europe.
[00:00:38] It’s a story of perseverance, finance, cunning, war, anti-Semitism, the power of information, secrecy and how to accumulate a simply vast amount of money.
[00:00:52] OK then, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:00:57] In 1846, a pamphlet was published in France. It was signed only “Satan”, the name of its true author not revealed.
[00:01:09] And it made a bold claim about an event that had happened 31 years beforehand, at the Battle of Waterloo.
[00:01:19] According to this pamphlet, a man called Nathan Rothschild was at The Battle of Waterloo.
[00:01:27] He was not a soldier, he wasn’t wielding a sword or gun or even commanding a regiment.
[00:01:34] Nathan Rothschild was a banker, the owner of the London branch of a large banking house called Rothschild, and the head of a pan-European banking conglomerate.
[00:01:47] Rothschild, according to the pamphlet, was waiting eagerly to see which direction the battle went.
[00:01:55] Would Napoleon’s French army emerge victorious?
[00:01:59] Or would the British-led coalition defeat the French?
[00:02:04] Rothschild wasn’t there merely out of curiosity, as a spectator.
[00:02:09] The result of the battle would have a large knock-on effect on the future of France, Britain, and even Europe more widely.
[00:02:19] And it would also have a large effect on the price of British government bonds, British national debt.
[00:02:29] As you will know, wars are expensive, and the British government borrowed heavily to finance this extensive military campaign.
[00:02:39] If Napoleon won the battle, the price of British government debt would drop, as investors would become worried about the British government’s continued ability to repay its obligations, to continue to pay the people who had lent it money.
[00:02:55] But if Napoleon lost, the opposite would happen. This debt would be considered less risky, investors would want to buy more of it, and the price of British government debt would rise.
[00:03:10] A lot was riding on the result.
[00:03:14] Nathan Rothschild, so the pamphlet alleged, was watching the battle so that he would learn the result firsthand, rather than wait for it to be printed in the newspapers.
[00:03:27] As soon as it became clear that Napoleon had been defeated, Rothschild got on a fast horse, rushed to the Belgian coast with the aim of boarding the first ship to England.
[00:03:40] But to his horror he found that there had been a terrible storm and all ships had been ordered not to go out to sea.
[00:03:50] He asked around, looking for anyone who would be able to transport him across the sea to England. Money was no object, the banker added, no price was too high.
[00:04:04] Eventually he found a fisherman who was willing to do it. He paid him handsomely, and the pair set off across the stormy sea for the coast of England.
[00:04:16] Rothschild arrived in London before any news of the result of the battle had reached the city.
[00:04:23] The reason he was in such a hurry was not because he wanted to be the first person to break the good news to the king or to the Prime Minister; it was because he sensed a once-in-a-lifetime money-making opportunity.
[00:04:38] He went straight to the stock market, the pamphlet alleged, and bought up as much government debt as he could get his hands on. When the news of Napoleon's defeat finally reached the capital, a full 24 hours after Rothschild had arrived, the price of British debt soared and Rothschild made 20 million francs, a gargantuan, vast amount of money.
[00:05:07] The story in the pamphlet went the 19th century equivalent of viral, and was translated into a bunch of different languages.
[00:05:16] And the legend of what happened even got adapted over the years.
[00:05:21] In one version Rothschild actually started selling debt to make people think that Britain had lost, and because he was such a well-respected financier people saw what he was doing and thought “Rothschild must know something”, so they started selling their debt too, and the price continued to fall.
[00:05:40] And at the last minute, just before the news of Napoleon's defeat broke, Rothschild swooped in and bought it all up, making himself an even bigger fortune in the process
[00:05:52] It is a great story, but the problem is that the story in the pamphlet simply isn’t true, at least in its original format.
[00:06:03] Nathan Rothschild wasn’t at the Battle of Waterloo, he didn’t rush back to England, there’s no evidence that he bought lots of debt, and by the time the pamphlet was published, Rothschild had died, so there was no possible way to conclusively refute the story.
[00:06:21] It turned out that the author of the pamphlet, so-called “Satan” was an anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist left wing journalist called Georges Dairnvall and the entire story had been invented to stir up discontent and increase animosity towards Jews, especially wealthy Jews such as Nathan Rothschild.
[00:06:44] Now, you may accuse me of doing the same thing by repeating the story here, but the reason to start with the story told in this pamphlet is because it touches on some of the key themes of the Rothschild family: the value of information, the link between war and money, the invention of government debt, and the prejudice that the family faced as Jews.
[00:07:11] And to tell the story of the Rothschild family, we must in fact start in a Jewish ghetto, the ghetto of Frankfurt.
[00:07:21] It was here that the father of the Rothschild dynasty, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, was born in 1744.
[00:07:30] Mayer Rothschild was initially a coin dealer, buying and selling coins, but he got his big break managing the financial affairs of William IX of Hesse, who was a wealthy German ruler.
[00:07:45] As you may know, throughout much of European history, Jews faced multiple restrictions on what they could and couldn’t do.
[00:07:55] Now, this varied by country and by ruler, but Jews were often not allowed to own land or become tradespeople like carpenters or blacksmiths, or to hold public office or to practise medicine.
[00:08:10] Jewish people weren’t allowed to do an awful lot, but the one thing that they were allowed to do was to lend money with interest.
[00:08:20] The Catholic Church forbade Christians from doing this, saying that it was usury, and it wasn’t allowed by the Bible.
[00:08:29] But Jewish people were not bound by the same restrictions.
[00:08:35] As a result, with few other options to participate in medieval society and with a clear need that could be filled, many Jewish people found opportunity in the money lending industry, lending out money to people and charging interest.
[00:08:52] It turned out that the Jewish community was well-placed to do this; Jewish people were spread throughout Europe, there were high levels of trust and pre-existing trade links between Jews in different cities and countries, so there was a lot of existing infrastructure, we could say, that already existed within the Jewish community.
[00:09:15] And by the time of Mayer Rothschild in the 18th century, the finance industry was well-developed within the Jewish community.
[00:09:24] But this was a double-edged sword.
[00:09:28] On the one hand, Jews were providing a valuable service, lending money to people who needed it, and being paid interest or commissions in return.
[00:09:39] As is still the case today, the finance industry can be lucrative, you can make a lot of money dealing with money, but on the flip side, this led to jealousy, suspicion and antisemitism, prejudice towards Jews who were perceived as having some kind of suspicious talent for making money and growing rich.
[00:10:02] Now, that’s some very brief background, but that is the backdrop for everything that's about to happen.
[00:10:10] To bring it back to the Rothschilds, Mayer Rothschild, the head of the family, became the choice financier for this man called William IX, who had made his fortune essentially hiring out his citizens as mercenaries, as soldiers for hire.
[00:10:29] Rothschild managed his patron’s wealth, doing everything from making sure that Napoleon didn’t get his hands on it through to investing it and growing his fortune.
[00:10:39] Mayer Rothschild himself grew very wealthy, but this was only sowing the seeds for what was to come.
[00:10:48] Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s most important legacy, his most profitable investment you might even say, was his family.
[00:10:57] He had 11 children, six daughters and five sons.
[00:11:03] Unfortunately the daughters don’t have much of a role to play in this story, but the five sons do.
[00:11:11] Mayer Rothschild decided to go from private banker of a wealthy German to the head of what would become the most successful banking partnership in Europe, and to do this he needed the help of his children.
[00:11:26] He sent each of his five sons to a centre of European finance, instructing them to go there and set up operations.
[00:11:36] The oldest, Amschel Mayer Rothschild, stayed in Frankfurt.
[00:11:40] The second, Salomon, went to Vienna.
[00:11:43] The third, Nathan, to England.
[00:11:46] The fourth, Carl, to Naples.
[00:11:48] And the fifth, James, went to Paris.
[00:11:52] There, they were instructed to set up business under the Rothschild name, Rothschild banks, essentially. Each bank would offer financial services to the people and rulers of the kingdom.
[00:12:07] But, of course, we aren’t talking about a baker or a blacksmith keeping a few hundred Francs with the Rothschilds. We are talking about high finance, raising capital for companies, and most importantly, raising money for countries.
[00:12:22] This all happened at the start of the 19th century, in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars.
[00:12:29] Wars are expensive, soldiers need to be paid, guns and ammunition bought.
[00:12:35] Historically, wars were typically paid for by raising taxes or simply forcing peasants to become soldiers and join the army.
[00:12:44] Clearly, both of those options are unpopular, as nobody likes taxes going up or being forced to risk their life on the battlefield.
[00:12:54] Another option was selling off pieces of land, but that wasn’t something a ruler typically wanted to do.
[00:13:02] But, when it came to the 19th century and with the pan-European banking network that the Rothschild sons had built up, there was an alternative.
[00:13:12] The Rothschilds, with their base in five different European countries and their extensive network of wealthy individuals, could offer governments loans, essentially, to fight wars.
[00:13:25] A government could go to one of the Rothschild brothers and say, hey, we need a load of money to fight this war, can you get it for us? And the Rothschilds would say, “sure”, they would go to wealthy individuals all over Europe and say “we have this great investment opportunity”, and investors would loan the government money, all enabled through the Rothschild banking network.
[00:13:50] The government would pay interest, the investors would be happy, and the Rothschilds would make a fee for facilitating the service.
[00:13:58] What’s more, the Rothschilds allowed investors to buy and sell their debt through their banks, making it a much more attractive investment because it was more easily tradable than ever before.
[00:14:11] And it was considered relatively low risk, because you were dealing with the government after all.
[00:14:18] It might sound like a basic thing to say, given that the global bond market is now worth literally hundreds of trillions of dollars, but it’s hard to overstate how important this innovation was, not just for governments but for the economy overall.
[00:14:35] Before this, there were very limited opportunities for people with money to invest it and make more money. There was, in some countries, some form of stock market, but these were characterised by booms and busts, and the idea of a publicly-listed company, an Amazon or Apple, that people could invest in, this was undeveloped.
[00:15:00] For most wealthy people, most potential investors, the only place to invest money was in land, and that had limited opportunity for a return.
[00:15:13] Through government bonds, investors could invest in the government, essentially, guaranteeing themselves a secure annual return, so long as the government didn’t go bust that was.
[00:15:25] And this brings us on to another very important element of the Rothschilds’ success: information.
[00:15:33] You heard in the story at the start of the episode about the allegation that Nathan had profited from learning the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo before anyone else.
[00:15:44] That is now believed to be completely false, but what is certainly true is that the Rothchild family had an extensive information network, with their own system of couriers, and even allegedly a system of homing pigeons, which ensured that it was always up to date with anything that might affect the price of its investments.
[00:16:06] If there was a result of a battle or a death of a monarch, or an invasion of a new territory, anything that might affect the creditworthiness of a government’s debt, and therefore its price, the Rothschilds had a sophisticated network that meant that it would know about it before anyone else, so that it could either make money or avoid losing money.
[00:16:29] What’s more, the Rothschild banking network became a hugely valuable partner to European governments, especially the British government, because of its ability to transfer money.
[00:16:43] In the modern era of being able to pick up your smartphone and send money anywhere in the world, it’s perhaps hard to imagine quite how important this was, but imagine you were the British government at the start of the 19th century.
[00:16:58] You have tens of thousands of soldiers fighting in France and Spain.
[00:17:03] They need to be paid.
[00:17:06] How do you do it? How does the money go from the British government in London through to a soldier in some field in Spain?
[00:17:16] This is where the Rothschilds came in.
[00:17:19] With their extensive network of banks in five different countries, and their access to different currencies as well as gold, they could facilitate all of this.
[00:17:30] The British government might pay the London branch of Rothschild in British pounds, the London branch would then arrange for this to be exchanged to gold bullion, transported via ship to Spain, exchanged with a local partner into currency that the soldiers could use, so that the soldiers could be paid.
[00:17:50] Now, you might have noticed that I said “might pay”, not “paid”, as how the Rothschilds managed to do this is still a little bit of a mystery, it’s a closed book.
[00:18:04] Even the biographers and historians of the Rothschild family don’t have access to the details of exactly how the family did it, but they soon became the go-to financial partner for European powers needing to move large amounts of money around.
[00:18:22] Now, as to exactly how much money the family made, which members of the family made it, and when this was made, this is also not public information, and is a subject of disagreement even with Rothschild biographers and historians.
[00:18:40] While Nathan, the head of the London branch, is probably the most famous of the brothers and the one that many people would say was the most savvy, and brought the most profits to the family, a critically acclaimed relatively recent biography by the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson claims that, although Nathan was the undisputed leader of the brothers and it was his London branch that had the first big success, the fortune was created more equally, with all five of the brothers pulling their weight.
[00:19:14] In any case, the fortune was vast.
[00:19:18] According to Ferguson’s biography, “When Nathan died in 1836, his personal fortune was equivalent to 0.62 per cent of British national income.”
[00:19:31] In other words, one individual, who had come to Britain in his twenties, had accumulated a fortune of nearly 1% of the total income in the country. If someone was to have a similar fortune today, it would be something like 20 billion Euro.
[00:19:51] And, as you might imagine, the family bought up and built huge mansions and palaces all over Europe. By the end of the 19th century, this luxury property portfolio of the family consisted of almost 50 palaces across Europe'.
[00:20:08] It is quite astounding, and what is perhaps even more astounding is that the Rothschild family has not only managed to not lose this vast fortune, but, with some exceptions, subsequent generations of Rothschilds have shown a remarkable talent for growing it.
[00:20:28] Of course, given that the family started in the late 18th century with five brothers, and is now going on 10 generations, the Rothschild dynasty is vast, linked through marriage with European royalty, spread out through Europe and involved in all manner of different businesses and industries.
[00:20:47] But it is still remarkably tight, facilitated by a lot of intermarriage, so things are kept “in the family”.
[00:20:56] The bread and butter of the Rothschilds is still in the world of high finance, both offering financial services and managing the vast Rothschild fortune.
[00:21:07] But the Rothschilds have spread out beyond the world of finance, they are also involved in property, oil and gas, luxury yachts, and if you are a wine lover you will no doubt have heard of the famous and very expensive Château Lafite Rothschild and Château Mouton Rothschild.
[00:21:25] The point is, the influence of the Rothschild family is vast, and this, combined with the underlying antisemitism that the family has dealt with its entire life, this has led it to being the subject of all sorts of conspiracy theories. These range from the Rothschilds artificially creating wars in the 19th century to profit from them through to the family controlling the weather, so that they can make money from knowing whether it will rain or shine tomorrow.
[00:21:54] There are images shared on social media claiming that the Rothschild family owns some ridiculous amount of the world’s wealth, I found one claiming that it is 80% of all money in the world that is owned by the Rothschilds.
[00:22:09] It is certainly an alluring theory, that there is some incredibly secretive rich family somewhere that controls the flow of money, that is pulling the strings of every politician and can make or break the fortunes of a country with the click of its fingers.
[00:22:24] But, much like the pamphlet alleging Nathan Rothschild was at Waterloo, it is simply not true.
[00:22:32] Estimates of the Rothschild family wealth vary, but they typically have it at somewhere in the tens of billions through to the hundreds of billions.
[00:22:41] So, to wrap things up, the Rothschild story is a tale of family unity, financial acumen, and adaptation through the centuries.
[00:22:51] It's a story that has intermingled with European history, politics, and business in myriad ways, leaving an indelible mark on the continent and beyond.
[00:23:01] And to think, it all started with five brothers in a tiny cramped bedroom in a Frankfurt ghetto.
[00:23:10] OK then, that is it for today's little exploration of The Rothschilds. There is so much more to say on this, tens of thousands of pages have been written on the subject, so I think this is certainly a topic to revisit and dive into in slightly more detail in a future episode.
[00:23:27] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:23:30] Have you heard of the Rothschilds before? What does the name “Rothschild” mean in your country?
[00:23:36] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:23:39] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:47] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:52] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
