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

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance comes a sweeping and timely history of the first truly global financial crisis—and the powerful forces that shaped its devastating aftermath.

During the 1850s and 1860s, the world entered its first great age of globalization. An unprecedented economic boom was fueled by an explosion in borrowing through the global bond market, financing ambitious projects—most notably the rapid expansion of the railways.

At the centre of this vast financial system stood the Rothschild family. With offices in London, Paris, Vienna, and Frankfurt, along with their New York agent August Belmont, the Rothschilds possessed an extraordinary ability to mobilize capital across borders and exert influence on an unprecedented scale.

But the boom created bubbles—and in the early 1870s, they began to burst. The resulting crisis spread rapidly from country to country, triggering economic collapse across Europe and beyond. As governments struggled to respond, decisions about the global currency system deepened the downturn and helped usher in a prolonged period of punishing deflation, fueling populism and anti-globalization sentiment.

In 1873, Liaquat Ahamed explores the far-reaching consequences of this financial catastrophe—from its role in weakening Reconstruction in the United States to its impact on the Ottoman Empire and Britain's eventual takeover of Egypt.

As markets descended into panic, the Rothschilds largely managed to protect themselves from the worst effects of the crash. Yet they became targets of vicious antisemitic scapegoating, revealing how economic fear and conspiracy theories could combine with devastating consequences.

Through the Rothschilds and a remarkable cast of eyewitnesses—including Karl Marx and Mark Twain—1873 brings the human drama of the crisis vividly to life while offering a compelling analysis of the economic and political forces that shaped the modern world.