the world of private banking

32
THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
und Söhne. Five railway-carriage loads of documents were pulped on its closure
in 1901. A significant number of important earlier documents were set aside for
transfer to Paris but even much of this fell victim to over-caution or neglect and was
burned. The papers of the Viennese bank were assumed to have been destroyed by
the Nazis on their seizure of the Bank. In 1994, we became aware of the survival
of some papers in the Special State Trophies Archive in Moscow, which contains
huge quantities of material seized by the Russians on their advance at the end of
the war. Several scholars, not least Niall Ferguson, have had the chance to examine
them since. They clearly do not represent a full body – what remains indeed has
the air more of a mixed bag of papers grabbed hastily from desks and cupboards,
rather than a systemic assembling of a full bank archive – but they contain an
interesting and important clutch of papers from the early years of the Frankfurt
bank, apparently put together as a proto-family archive by Salomon in Vienna in
the 1840s. The brothers’ sense of their own lifetime achievement can be seen not
only, therefore, in the iconographic paintings of the semi-mythical stories of their
beginnings which they commissioned in these years, but in this very practical
desire to see a historical record retained.
Prior to the nationalization of the French bank in 1981, the archives of de
Rothschild Frères had been transferred to the custody of the Archives Nationales
and are now stored in the Centre des Archives du Monde du Travail at Roubaix,
in northern France. These are far more comprehensive, covering the whole period
from as early as 1811, immediately upon James’s arrival in France, through to
the Second World War. Extensive series of copies of outgoing letters survive as
well as the routine incoming correspondence from the other Rothschild banks and
their agents. There is a great deal of material on the French family’s involvement
in commercial activities, including railways in France, Lombardy, Austria and
beyond, and involvement in oil, minerals and mining. Access to these archives is
given with the written permission of the French family.
In comparison with all these vicissitudes in mainland Europe, the archives
of the London bank have enjoyed comparative stability from external upsets and
disasters. From very soon after Nathan’s arrival in England, and before Nathan
began to involve himself in the business of banking, records survive – somewhat
miraculously, given Nathan’s own complete disorganization as a record keeper,
the subject of more than one rebuke from his father. Indeed, the body of books
and papers which survive from his years as a textile merchant in Manchester are
in themselves regarded by historians of commercial and industrial development as
among the most significant bodies of evidence surviving for the textile industry
from this time and place. They include ledgers and journals, correspondence and
accounts with small cutters, dyers and printers, together with one of the family’s
More is now known about these papers. See the concluding paragraph by Melanie
Aspey.
Applications for access to these papers (Fond AQ132) should be made to the CAMT
who will forward a request for access to The Rothschild Archive.