Many authors have, directly or indirectly, addressed this question and each has come up with their own nuanced combination of wealthy individuals and families, their political connections, as well as the financial instruments and organizational structures through which their power is gained and exercised.
For the purposes of this study, I am going to define the Global Elite as those families that had acquired their vast wealth and firmly established their preeminent political and economic power in global society by the end of the 19th century.
These families have thus played the central role in shaping institutions and events both before but also since that time, thus providing the framework in which other wealthy people have since emerged.
In order to perform their fundamental role in shaping the modern world to serve their purposes, this Elite has facilitated the creation of a vast network of agents - corporations, institutions, other families and individuals - who are owned and/or controlled by this Elite and act as 'fronts' to advance Elite interests.
In any given period, the Elite families remain largely unchanged (while succeeding generations of individuals further the families' interests) but the organizational and individual agents through which these families work vary, depending on Elite aims in the contexts it precipitates.
A landmark Rothschild Palace in Frankfurt, Germany, Villa Günthersburg (photographed 1855) (Licensed under the Public Domain)
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View full-sizeDownload Let me briefly illustrate my approach by using one family - the 'House of Rothschild' - as a case study before moving onto a wider description of how Elite families use their wealth to shape corporations, institutions, events and people to serve their own purposes.
This example is drawn from the official Rothschild Archive and two (sometimes conflicting) Rothschild-authorized accounts of the family's history written at different times.
In addition, the account draws on sources that report neutrally on Rothschild involvement as well as some sources that are critical.
These sources are cited in context below.
By the mid-18th century, the ancestors of Mayer Amschel had long been small merchants in the town ghetto of Frankfurt.
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View full-sizeDownload Mayer Amschel Rothschild (23 February 1744 – 19 September 1812; also spelled Anschel) was a German-Jewish banker and the founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Referred to as a "founding father of international finance", Rothschild was ranked seventh on the Forbes magazine list of "The Twenty Most Influential Businessmen of All Time" in 2005.
But, as a Jew without a family name and before street numbering was used, Mayer was also known by the name some ancestors had used on the house sign where they once lived:
Rothschild (Red Shield).
With more ability than other merchants and having been sent to learn the rudiments of business in the firm of Wolf Jakob Oppenheim, he became a dealer in rare coins, medals and antiques, the buyers of which were almost invariably aristocratic collectors, including William, Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Kassel.
It was this business that enabled Mayer Amschel to accumulate the capital to move into banking, a natural outgrowth of his policy of extending credit to some of his clients.
His wealth started to increase rapidly as he focused more on state and merchant banking, both local and international.
With a policy of seeking little profit from interest on loans while seeking trade concessions in other areas, seeking clientele only among 'the noblest personages in Germany', secret bookkeeping in parallel with the official one and, later, deploying his five sons to replicate his style and activities in:
England (Nathan, who, after a few years in Manchester, established himself in the City of London)
Paris (Jakob, known as James)
Naples (Kalman, or Carl)
Vienna (Salomon)
as well as Frankfurt (where eldest son Amschel eventually succeeded their father Mayer), the Rothschild dynasty and 'multinational business model' quickly established itself throughout Europe.
Critically, it was serviced by the maintenance of close relationships with leading political figures and salaried agents working in financial markets who provided essential political and commercial news, as well as private communications channels (including coaches with secret compartments) that worked with enormous efficiency.
And it was this 'Red Shield' communication network, later operating under Royal patronage, combined with a certain audacity, that enabled the Rothschilds to profit handsomely from a variety of adverse circumstances including the restrictions on trade between England and the continent which characterized the Napoleonic period, and the Napoleonic Wars as well.
This included smuggling vast amounts of contraband goods from England to the continent and transferring a substantial hoard of gold bullion through France to finance the feeding of Wellington's army.
Most spectacularly, and despite family efforts to suppress awareness of this fact, the Rothschilds profited enormously from their privileged notice that Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, as recorded by William T. Still and Patrick S.J. Carmack in their 3.5-hour documentary The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America (with the relevant section of the four-part transcript of the video available here: 'The Money Masters: Part II'.)
How did this happen?
Following a long series of wars across Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, during which he was very successful, rapidly promoted and, in 1804, elected Emperor of France, Napoleon was eventually defeated.
He abdicated and was exiled to Elba, an island off the Tuscan coast, in 1814 but escaped nine months later in February 1815.
As he returned to Paris, French troops were sent out to capture Napoleon, but such was his charisma that,
'The soldiers rallied around their old leader and hailed him as their emperor once again.'
And, having borrowed funds to rearm, in March 1815 Napoleon's freshly equipped army marched out to be ultimately defeated by Britain's Duke of Wellington at Waterloo less than three months later.
As Still remarks:
'Some writers claimed Napoleon borrowed 5 million pounds from the Bank of England to rearm.
But it appears these funds actually came from Ubard Banking House in Paris.
Nevertheless, from about this point on, it was not unusual for privately controlled central banks to finance both sides in a war.'
'Why would a central bank finance opposing sides in a war?' Still asks.
'Because war is the biggest debt generator of them all.
A nation will borrow any amount for victory.
The ultimate loser is loaned just enough to hold out the vain hope of victory, and the ultimate winner is given enough to win. Besides, such loans are usually conditioned upon the guarantee that the victor will honor the debts of the vanquished.'
While the outcome of the battle at Waterloo was certainly in doubt, back in London Nathan Rothschild planned to use the outcome, no matter who won or lost, to try to seize control over the British stock and bond market and possibly even the Bank of England.
How did he do this?
Here is one account.
'Rothschild stationed a trusted agent, a man named Rothworth, on the north side of the battlefield, closer to the English Channel.'
Once the battle had been decided, at the cost of many thousands of French, English and other European lives, Rothworth headed immediately for the Channel.
He delivered the news to Nathan Rothschild, a full 24 hours before Wellington's own courier arrived with the news.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild (16 September 1777 – 28 July 1836, also known as Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild, was an English-German banker, businessman and financier. Born in Frankfurt am Main, he was the third of the five sons of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his wife, Guttle (née Schnapper). He was the founder of the English branch of the prominent Rothschild family.
Rothschild hurried to the stock market and, with all eyes on him given the Rothschild's legendary communications network was well known, others present observed Rothschild knowing that if Wellington had been defeated, and Napoleon was again at large in Europe, the British financial situation would become grave indeed. Rothschild began selling his consoles (British government bonds).
'Other nervous investors saw that Rothschild was selling. It could only mean one thing: Napoleon must have won, Wellington must have lost.'
The market plummeted. Soon everyone was selling their own consoles and prices dropped sharply.
'But then Rothschild started secretly buying up the consoles through his agents for only a fraction of their worth hours before.'
Fallacious?
As Still concludes this recounting of the episode:
'One hundred years later, the New York Times ran the story that Nathan Rothschild's grandson had attempted to secure a court order to suppress a book with that stock market story in it.
The Rothschild family claimed that the story was untrue and libelous.
But the court denied the Rothschilds' request and ordered the family to pay all court costs.'
In any case, having built their initial fortune using various means - some of which, as just illustrated, were neither moral nor legal - throughout the 19th century the Rothschild family continued to accumulate wealth through the international bond market, which they played a key role in developing, as well as other forms of financial business: bullion broking and refining, accepting and discounting commercial bills, direct trading in commodities, foreign exchange dealing and arbitrage, even insurance.
The Rothschilds also had a select group of clients - usually royal and aristocratic individuals whom they wished to cultivate - to whom they offered a range of 'personal banking services' ranging from large personal loans (such as that to the Austrian Chancellor Prince Metternich) to a first-class private postal service (for Queen Victoria).
The family also had substantial mining interests and was a major industrial investor backing the construction of railway lines in Europe in the 1830s and 1840s.
But, apart from its other interests, the family continued to be heavily involved in 'the money trade'.
'From 1870 onwards, London was the center of Britain's greatest export: money.
Vast quantities of savings and earnings were gathered and invested at considerable profit through the international merchant banks of Rothschild, Baring, Lazard, and Morgan in the City'.
Coat of arms of the City of London. The Latin motto reads Domine Dirige Nos, "Lord, guide us". (Licensed under the Public Domain)
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View full-sizeDownload The City of London Corporation, an independent square mile in the heart of London, was founded in about AD50 and quickly established itself as an important commercial centre which ultimately gave birth to some of the world's greatest financial institutions such as the London Stock Exchange, Lloyd's of London and, in 1694, the Bank of England.
The City's 'modern period' is sometimes dated from 1067.
However, as explained by Nicholas Shaxson, the City,
'is an ancient, [semi-foreign] entity lodged inside the British nation state; a "prehistoric monster which had mysteriously survived into the modern world", as a 19th century would-be City reformer put it... the corporation is an offshore island inside Britain, a tax haven in its own right.'
Of course, the term 'tax haven' is a misnomer,
'because such places aren't just about tax.
What they sell is escape: from the laws, rules and taxes of jurisdictions elsewhere, usually with secrecy as their prime offering.
The notion of elsewhere (hence the term "offshore") is central. The Cayman Islands' tax and secrecy laws are not designed for the benefit of the 50,000-odd Caymanians, but help wealthy people and corporations, mostly in the US and Europe, get around the rules of their own democratic societies.
The outcome is one set of rules for a rich elite and another for the rest of us.'
In the words of Shaxson:
The City's 'elsewhere' status in Britain stems from a simple formula: over centuries, sovereigns and governments have sought City loans, and in exchange the City has extracted privileges and freedoms from rules and laws to which the rest of Britain must submit.
The City does have a noble tradition of standing up for citizens' freedoms against despotic sovereigns, but this has morphed into freedom for money.
As Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor explain it then, by 1870:
City influence and investments crossed national boundaries and raised funds for governments and companies across the entire world.
The great investment houses made billions, their political allies and agents grew wealthy... Edward VII, both as king and earlier as Prince of Wales, swapped friendship and honors for the generous patronage of the Rothschilds, Cassel, and other Jewish banking families like the Montagus, Hirschs and Sassoons...
The Bank of England was completely in the hands of these powerful financiers, and the relationship went unchallenged….
The flow of money into the United States during the nineteenth century advanced industrial development to the immense benefit of the millionaires it created:
Rockefeller
Carnegie
Morgan
Vanderbilt
and their associates.
The Rothschilds represented British interests, either directly through front companies or indirectly through agencies that they controlled.
Railroads
steel
shipbuilding
construction
oil
and finance blossomed...
These small groups of massively rich individuals on both sides of the Atlantic knew one another well, and the Secret Elite in London initiated the very select and secretive dining club, the Pilgrims, that brought them together on a regular basis.
To choose one example from those just listed, you can read an official account of the Rothschild family's early involvement in oil production, including its 'decisive influence' in the formation of Royal Dutch Shell, in the Rothschild Archive.
Beyond their investments in the industries just listed, however, the Rothschilds had significant media interests: Their Paribas Bank,
'Controlled the all-powerful news agency Havas, which in turn owned the most important advertising agency in France.'
Ibid. p. 214.
And, by the late 19th century, direct Rothschild investment in major 'armaments companies' (now better known as weapons corporations) and related industries was substantial with official biographer Niall Ferguson candidly noting,
'If late-nineteenth-century imperialism had its "military-industrial complex" the Rothschilds were unquestionably part of it.'
Of course, as noted previously, the Rothschild family is not the only family that uses its wealth to exercise enormous economic and political power and to profit from war, but the evidence suggests that it has long been the most deeply entrenched in the institutions, including those it has created, that facilitate the exercise of this power.
Moreover, it is linked to many other wealthy families through a multitude of arrangements as will be shown.
Consider the following examples of how the power of wealth is exercised and note the names of some other wealthy families.
Invariably working 'in the background', elite figures spend considerable time manipulating 'well-positioned' people, and none are more adept at this than the Rothschilds.
To cite just one of many examples,
'both the great estates of Balmoral and Sandringham, so intimately associated with the British royal family, were facilitated, if not entirely paid for, through the largess of the House of Rothschild',
...thus, maintaining the long-standing Rothschild tradition of gifting 'loans' - that is, bribes, as the brothers had long before privately acknowledged - to royalty (and other key officials).
Of course, this manipulation of people is done to ensure the creation of particular institutions or to precipitate or facilitate a particular sequence of events.
Just one obvious example of this occurred when the British government was manipulated into the Boer War of 1899-1902 by 'the secret society of Cecil Rhodes' as it was originally known and of which Lord (Nathan) Rothschild was a founding member along with Alfred, later Lord, Milner who succeeded Rhodes as head of this exclusive secret club.
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View full-sizeDownload Cecil John Rhodes (/ˈsɛsəl ˈroʊdz/ SES-əl ROHDZ; 5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902)[2] was an English mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. He and his British South Africa Company founded the southern African territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), which the company named after him in 1895. He also devoted much effort to realising his vision of a Cape to Cairo Railway through British territory. Rhodes set up the Rhodes Scholarship, which is funded by his estate.
While the British public was given a more palatable pretext for this war via the media, it was fundamentally fought to defend and consolidate the rich South African gold-mining interests of wealthy businesspeople, including the Rothschilds.
By the time the war ended, the Transvaal's gold was finally in their hands.
The cost?
'32,000 deaths in the concentration camps, [of whom more than 26,000 were women and children]; 22,000 British Empire troops were killed and 23,000 wounded.
Boer casualties numbered 34,000. Africans killed amounted to 14,000.'
Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 23 & 38-50
