Jewish emancipation threatended the inter-European privileges that Jewish bankers had relied on

Evidence

The political emancipation of the Jews at the turn of the eighteenth century in some countries, and its discussion in the rest of Central and Western Europe, resulted first of all in a decisive change in their attitude toward the state, which was somehow symbolized in the rise of the house of Rothschild. The new policy of these court Jews, who were the first to become full-fledged state bankers, came to light when they were no longer content to serve one particular prince or government through their international relationships with court Jews of other countries, but decided to establish themselves internationally and serve simultaneously and concurrently the governments in Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy and Austria. To a large extent, this unprecedented course was a reaction of the Rothschilds to the dangers of real emancipation, which, together with equality, threatened to nationalize the Jewries of the respective countries, and to destroy the very inter-European advantages on which the position of Jewish bankers had rested. Old Meyer Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the house, must have recognized that the inter-European status of Jews was no longer secure and that he had better try to realize this unique international position in his own family. The establishment of his five sons in the five financial capitals of Europe—Frankfurt, Paris, London, Naples and Vienna—was his ingenious way out of the embarrassing emancipation of the Jews. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 118

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: A concrete mechanism where formal equality endangers an existing privilege structure — parallels later analyses of how citizenship/national belonging undercuts prior communal arrangements.
• SHARE: Send to a friend into Rothschild or economic history of Europe: the five sons placed in five capitals as a deliberate family hedge against nationalizing emancipation.

Related

• Emancipation’s nationalizing threat drove Jewish bankers to internationalize across states. (similarity 0.94)
• Prussian emancipation of Jews followed from equal-citizenship ideology, not economic interest (similarity 0.81)
• French Jewry’s dissolution into cliques preserved rather than ended its state influence (similarity 0.79)
• Jewish intellectual assimilation shifted Jews from inter-European traders to national citizens seeking social admittance (similarity 0.79)
• Rothschild power grew from Frankfurt’s unique unexpelled Jewish community (similarity 0.79)
• Jewish bankers allied with governments as such, never with particular states (similarity 0.79)
• The Rothschilds’ rise rested on exceptional legal status outside ordinary princely jurisdiction (similarity 0.79)
• The Rothschilds replaced religious tradition as the symbol of Jewish cohesion (similarity 0.78)
• Government loan monopolies transformed scattered Jewish wealth into organized transnational cohesion (similarity 0.78)
• Wealthy Jewish families abandoned finance for intellectual professions en masse (similarity 0.78)
• Jewish emancipation simultaneously meant equality and the extension of group privileges (similarity 0.78)