1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World

Over the course of the 1850s and 1860s, during the first era of globalization, the world experienced an unprecedented economic boom. Fueling this expansion was an explosion in the global bond market, at the hub of which stood one family—the Rothschilds, arguably the wealthiest banking family in history. In the early 1870s, the bubble burst. Stock markets from Vienna to New York crashed, and dozens of railroads and many governments defaulted. Financial officials responded by blundering into a precipitous remaking of the global currency system—exacerbating the ensuing economic collapse and setting the stage for decades of a punitive deflation that sparked waves of anti-globalist populism. In his new book, 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Liaquat Ahamed examines this enthralling history and how the crisis of 1873 was, among other things, a death blow to Reconstruction in the United States and the proximate cause of the Ottoman Empire’s slow death spiral. He also explores how though the Rothschilds had presciently kept a low profile during the bubble, when the deluge came, they were viciously scapegoated as part of a wider hatred directed at “Jewish finance,” a strain of antisemitism that would come to full evil flower during the twentieth century. Ahamed provides a bird’s-eye reckoning with the full dimension of the crisis, from its buildup to its long aftermath, drawing upon the Rothschilds and a cast of other witnesses to give the human perspective.

Join New America’s Future Security Program at New America’s DC office, as they welcome Liaquat Ahamed for a discussion of his new book 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World. Ahamed graduated with degrees in economics from Cambridge and Harvard, worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and had a twenty-five career as a professional investment manager based in London and New York before turning to writing. His first book, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, about the lead up to the 1929 Great Depression, won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Gold Medal, and the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award. He is a trustee of the Putnam Funds, an adviser to the Rock Creek Group, and the Chair of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference.

Join the conversation online using #1873book and following @NewAmericaISP.

This event is held in partnership with the Future Security Initiative at Arizona State University