Loading descriptions...
Ferguson outlines the close relationship between money and war.
Money and war have long had a close relationship. In early
19th-century London, the powerful Rothschild family helped the
British government finance its war against Napoleon and, despite a
nearly catastrophic miscalculation of the war's duration that could
have led to financial ruin, found an opportunity to create enormous
wealth through the purchase of British bonds. Fifty years later,
the relationship between war and money would again be felt in
America's Civil War, when the Confederacy attempted, with
disastrous results, to finance itself by boosting the value of its
cotton - its only tangible asset - by placing an embargo on exports
to Britain. In Great Britain, the Duke of Buckingham became the
first great landowner to see his wealth disappear as the value of
his land plummeted, marking the beginning of the end of the British
aristocracy. And in 1914, the assassination of another Duke
-Ferdinand - would bring an end to the first wave of economic
globalization within a matter of weeks.