The family rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire, who established his banking business in the 1760s.

[9] Today, their interests cover a diverse range of fields, including financial services, real estate, mining, energy, agriculture, winemaking, and nonprofits.

Born in the "Judengasse", the ghetto of Frankfurt, Mayer developed a finance house and spread his empire by installing each of his five sons in the five main European financial centres to conduct business.

Johnson writes that, unlike the court factors of earlier centuries, who had financed and managed European noble houses, but often lost their wealth through violence or expropriation, the new kind of international bank created by the Rothschilds was impervious to local attacks.

[16] Another essential part of Mayer Rothschild's strategy for success was to keep control of their banks in family hands, allowing them to maintain full secrecy about the size of their fortunes.

The head of the whole group was the Rothschild family..." It also says: "Of more recent years, non-Jewish financiers have learned the same cosmopolitan method, and, on the whole, the control is now rather less than more in Jewish hands than formerly.

[24] The brothers helped coordinate Rothschild activities across the continent, and the family developed a network of agents, shippers and couriers to transport gold across war-torn Europe.

In one instance, the family network enabled Nathan to receive in London the news of Wellington's victory at the Battle of Waterloo a full day ahead of the government's official messengers.

Baron Rothschild, the head of the house, is the true king of Judah, the prince of the captivity, the Messiah so long looked for by this extraordinary people.

[38]The Neapolitan Rothschilds was the first branch of the family to decline when revolution broke out and Giuseppe Garibaldi captured Naples on 7 September 1860 and set up a provisional Italian government.

By the start of the 20th century, the introduction of national taxation systems had ended the Rothschilds' policy of operating with a single set of commercial account records, which resulted in the various branches gradually going their own separate ways as independent banks.

[39] The rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s led to a precarious situation for the Austrian Rothschilds under the annexation of Austria in 1938 when the family was pressured to sell its banking operation at a fraction of its real worth.

Despite having their bank restored to them at the end of the war, the French Rothschilds were powerless in 1982 as the family business was nationalised by the socialist government of newly elected President François Mitterrand.

In 1887, the French and British Rothschild banking houses loaned money to, and invested in, the De Beers diamond mines in South Africa, becoming its largest shareholders.

Following the Napoleonic Wars, he played a major role in financing the construction of railways and the mining business that helped make France an industrial power.

[45] However, the Paris business suffered a near death blow in 1982, when the socialist government of François Mitterrand nationalised and renamed it as Compagnie Européenne de Banque.

The Paris Rothschilds have since led the Thomson Financial League Tables in Investment Banking Merger and Acquisition deals in the UK, France and Italy.

[49] The crash of 1929 brought problems, and Baron Louis von Schwartz Rothschild attempted to shore up the Creditanstalt, Austria's largest bank, to prevent its collapse.

In 1999, the government of Austria agreed to return to the Rothschild family some 250 art treasures looted by the Nazis and absorbed into state museums after the war.

In 1924, he reorganized the Palestinian branch of the ICA into the Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association (PICA), which acquired more than 125,000 acres (50,586 ha) of land and set up business ventures.

[58] In Tel Aviv, the Rothschild Boulevard is named after him, as are a number of localities throughout Israel which he assisted in founding, including Metulla, Zikhron Ya'akov, Rishon Lezion and Rosh Pina.

[61] Outside the President's Chamber is displayed the letter Dorothy de Rothschild wrote to then Prime Minister Shimon Peres expressing her intention to donate a new building for the Supreme Court.

Interviewed by Haaretz in 2010, Baron Benjamin Rothschild, who was a Swiss-based member of the banking family, said that he supported the Israeli–Palestinian peace process: "I understand that it is a complicated business, mainly because of the fanatics and extremists – and I am talking about both sides.

They are, listed in order of founding: Since the late 19th century, the family has taken a low-key public profile, donating many famous estates, as well as vast quantities of art, to charity, and generally eschewing conspicuous displays of wealth.

Today, Rothschild businesses are on a smaller scale than they were throughout the 19th century, although they encompass a diverse range of fields, including: real estate, financial services, mixed farming, energy, mining, winemaking and nonprofits.

[71] It was believed that the move was intended to help Rothschild Continuation Holdings AG gain access to a wider capital pool, enlarging its presence in East Asian markets.

Although this group is primarily a financial entity, specializing in asset management and private banking, its activities also cover mixed farming, luxury hotels and yacht racing.

In late 2010, Benjamin de Rothschild, the chairman at the time, said that the family had been unaffected by the 2007–2008 financial crisis, due to their conservative business practices: "We came through it well, because our investment managers did not want to put money into crazy things."

[105] The family also has lent its name to "le goût Rothschild," a very glamorous style of interior decoration whose elements include neo-Renaissance palaces, extravagant use of velvet and gilding, vast collections of armour and sculpture, a sense of Victorian horror vacui, and the highest masterworks of art.

As we have seen, however, wars tended to hit the price of existing bonds by increasing the risk that a debtor state would fail to meet its interest payments in the event of defeat and losses of territory.