Free to Cheat: “Jewish Emancipation” and the Anglo-Jewish Cousinhood, Part 1, Andrew Joyce

To illustrate the extent of blood and financial ties of this network of families, let us consider the following: in 1870, the treasurer of the London Jewish Board of Guardians was Viennese-born Ferdinand de Rothschild (1838–1898). Ferdinand had married his cousin Elvina, who was a niece of the President of the London United Synagogue, Sir Anthony de Rothschild (1810–1876). Meanwhile, the Board of Deputies was at that time headed by Moses Montefiore, whose wife, a daughter of Levi Barent Cohen, was related to Nathan Meyer Rothschild. Nathan Meyer Rothschild’s wife was also a daughter of Levi Barent Cohen, and thus Montefiore was uncle to the aforementioned Anthony de Rothschild. In addition, Anthony was married to a niece of Montefiore, the daughter of Abraham Montefiore and Henrietta Rothschild[21]…et cetera, et cetera. In financial terms, the houses of Rothschild and Montefiore had united in 1824 to form the Alliance Insurance Company, and most of the families were involved in each other’s stock-brokering and banking concerns. Endelmann notes that in these firms “new recruits were drawn exclusively from the ranks of the family.”[22]

Working tightly within this ethnic and familial network, the Cousinhood amassed huge fortunes, and in the years before World War I, despite comprising less than three tenths of 1% of the population, Jews constituted over 20% of non-landed British millionaires.[23] William Rubinstein notes that of these millionaires, all belonged to the Cousinhood.[24] It is worth noting that this wealth was derived exclusively from the fields of “banking, finance, the stock markets and bullion trading.”[25]

Occidental Observer, 2022