Amongst the serried ranks of capitalists who drove European industrialisation in the nineteenth century, the Rothschilds were amongst the most dynamic and the most successful. Establishing businesses in Germany, Britain, France, Austria, and Italy the family soon became leading financiers, bankrolling a host of private and government businesses ventures. In so doing they played a major role in fuelling economic and industrial development across Europe, providing capital for major projects, particularly in the mining and railway sectors. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Spain, where for more than a century the House of Rothschild was one of the primary motors of Spanish economic development. Yet, despite the undoubted importance of the Rothschild's role, questions still remain regarding the actual impact of these financial activities and the effect they had on financial sectors, companies and Spanish markets. It is to such questions that this book turns its attention, utilising a host of archive sources in Britain, France and Spain to fully analyse the investments and financial activities carried out by the Rothschild House in Spain during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In so doing the book tackles a variety of interrelated issues: Firstly, fixing the period when the main capital entries sprung from the initiatives taken by the Rothschild family, how consequential they really were, and the sectors they affected. Secondly, quantifying the importance of these investments and financial activities and the weight they had on financial sectors, companies and Spanish markets, as well as in foreign investment in each period. Thirdly, outlining the steps followed and means used by the Rothschild House in order to achieve the success in each of their businesses. Finally, analysing the consequences of this phenomenon in the actual growth of Spanish contemporary economy, both in a general and in a partial scale. By exploring these crucial questions, not only do we learn much more about the working of one of the leading financial institutions and the development of the Spanish economy, but a greater understanding of the broader impact of international finance and the flow of capital in the nineteenth century is achieved.

This book is a biography of Pueblonuevo del Terrible, a mining town located in Andalusia, Spain. Based on previously unexamined sources, the study paints a fresh portrait of industrial workers and their families in Córdoba province, enriching our understanding of this mostly agricultural region. Previous studies of laboring communities in Spain have identified radical workers, miners among them, as a destabilizing element due to their insurgent protest activity, including lethal violence. This study, by contrast, describes both worker activism and cross-class organizing as constructive, not destructive, and aimed at integration into Spanish society. Economically, the mining zone was dominated by a French company in the Rothschild portfolio. But by running their own city, waging peaceful labor strikes, raising a church, building housing, and honoring their dead, residents turned a quasi-colonial outpost into a pueblo worth defending, and they rallied in defense of the Republic at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In the making of Pueblonuevo del Terrible, Spanish men and women contended with the perils of mine work, the jolts of industrial capitalism, creeping fascism, and civil war. As such, this book tells a village-scale story of global events that defined the twentieth century.

Based on five years of archival research, this book offers a radical reinterpretation of Britain and Spain’s relationship during the growth, apogee and decline of the British Empire. It shows that from the early nineteenth century Britain turned Spain into an ‘informal’ colony, using its economic and military dominance to achieve its strategic and economic ends. Britain’s free trade campaign, which aimed to tear down the legal barriers to its explosive trade and investment expansion, undermined Spain’s attempts to achieve industrial take-off, demonstrating that the relationship between the two countries was imperial in nature, and not simply one of unequal national power. Exploring five key moments of crisis in their relations, from the First Carlist War in the 1830s to the Second World War, the author analyses Britain’s use of military force in achieving its goals, and the consequences that this had for economic and political policy-making in Spain. Ultimately, the Anglo-Spanish relationship was an early example of the interaction between industrial power and colonies, formal and informal, that characterised the post-World War Two period. An insightful read for anyone researching the British Empire and its colonies, this book offers an innovative perspective by closely examining the volatile relationship between two European powers.

The Unexpected Story of Nathaniel Rothschild is the only full length biography of Nathaniel, the first Lord Rothschild (1840-1915). The Rothschild family in all its branches is of compelling and continuing interest and fascination. A family that could make or break dynasties, that could bankrupt industrial magnates but who also were outstanding philanthropists and collectors of some of the world`s greatest art treasures. Ardently supportive of the founding of the State of Israel, Nathaniel was also adept at playing the political game within and without Jewry. He went to extremes to ensure that Jewish refugees from Russian pogroms went to Palestine and did not come to the UK. The first Jew in the House of Lords, he had previously stood as a Liberal MP and fought for social justice. He knew every leading British politician from Disraeli to Lloyd George. Indeed as a leading figure in the City, he helped Lloyd George to surmount this country's worst ever financial crisis. He died a man mourned by the political elite and the masses. It is only now that his story has been fully told.

This book explores the complex history of Catalonia in relation to Spain from an economic and political perspective. It begins in the Middle Ages and ends in the present day, analysing the intricate political problems of modern day Catalonia within a context of European integration and nationalism.

The subject of transnational lives has only recently gained importance in historical research. With its transnational approach to “mobility and biography,” this volume brings together research on aspects of mobility and biography across different times and spaces to open up new interdisciplinary perspectives. Networks, movements and the capacity to become socially or spatially mobile in and across Europe are not only analysed as structural factors, but rather seen as connected to concrete practices of mobility among different groups in the spheres of business, politics and the arts: from Jewish merchants via legal and financial advisors all the way to musicians.