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Abstract:
N. M. Rothschild & Sons (NMR), the banking house which the Frankfurt-born Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836) began operating from New Court in London in 1809 and which is continued to this day by his descendants, has a long history of involvement in Brazil. Extensive documentation of this history is preserved in The Rothschild Archive in London, where material up to 1930 is available for consultation. The firm's initial business with Brazil was in merchant banking activities and bullion dealing, but in 1855 it became the Brazilian government's financial agent in London and went on to handle the government's borrowing in the London capital markets and to be closely concerned with the country's fiscal, commercial, and exchange rate policy. With the bank at the heart of the development of Brazilian public finance, The Rothschild Archive is an important resource for an understanding of this aspect of Brazilian economic and political history, as well as the history of British informal imperialism and emerging patterns of globalization.
PRIVATE BUSINESS 1812-1900
NMR's business in Brazil dates back to the early nineteenth century and to the firm's earliest years: the first letter from Brazil in the Archive dates from 1812.2 The bank carried out merchant banking activities for firms based in Brazil or having business in Brazil, accepting bills of exchange, trading in specie and bullion, and arranging shipment and insurance of goods. A feature of the bank's modus operandi was its assiduous information gathering, building up networks of firms prepared to act as correspondents and agents to supply intelligence about political developments as well as financial and commodity markets.
There are a large number of firms from whom correspondence survives: although outgoing copy correspondence exists, most of it was produced using a wet copy process, and quality varies enormously, with legibility being often extremely poor. Whilst much of this correspondence concerns small pieces of routine business, there are a number of "correspondent" firms whose letters can be of wider interest. The principal firms are: Finnie Brothers, Leuzinger & Co., Naylor Brothers, and Samuel, Phillips & Co. of Rio de Janeiro and Buschek & Co. of Bahia.3 The bulk of this correspondence is for the first half of the nineteenth century: it is unclear whether the reduction in...