1873

A sweeping account of the financial crisis of 1873, this book examines the rise of a global bond boom and the collapse that followed. It focuses on the Rothschild banking family and the wider forces of speculation, overinvestment, defaults, and currency upheaval that spread from Vienna to New York.

The narrative traces the crisis’s economic and political aftermath, showing how its effects reached Reconstruction, the Ottoman Empire, and later currents of anti-globalist populism. It presents a broad historical study of international finance and its long-term consequences.