Emile and Isaac Pereire


Book Description

Emile (1800–75) and Isaac Pereire (1806–80) were pivotal and sensational figures, their lives and careers a lens through which to re-examine the history of France in the nineteenth century. Among the first generation of Jews emancipated by the French Revolution, they became significant Saint-Simonians, contributing to its philosophy of financial and economic reform. They were the first to implement the new rail technology in France and to launch the first investment bank of any size in Europe, the Crédit Mobilier. The Pereires ultimately came to stand behind banks and railways throughout Europe and in the Ottoman Empire. They were thus major players in France’s and Europe’s industrialisation and the modernisation of its banking system. This book is equally a social and cultural history of the Jews in France, addressing the means through which the Pereires managed their business empire and the contribution of family life to its success. It is their first full-scale biography in English.




Emile and Isaac Pereire


Book Description

Emile (1800-75) and Isaac Pereire (1806-80) were pivotal and sensational figures, their lives and careers a lens through which to re-examine the history of France in the nineteenth century. They were among the first generation of Jews emancipated by the French Revolution. Significant Saint-Simonians, they contributed to its philosophy of financial and economic reform. They were among the first to implement the new rail technology in France and their Saint-Simonian understanding that major railway development required investment capital on an unprecedented scale saw them launch the first investment bank of any size in Europe, the Crédit Mobilier. This became the holding company for a series of significant enterprises in which it had major investments. The Pereires came to stand behind banks and railways throughout Europe and in the Ottoman Empire and were integral to Napoleon III's foreign as well as domestic policies, major players in France's industrialisation and the modernisation of its banking system. This is their first biography in English. Commencing with their early lives in the Sephardic community of Bordeaux, it follows their introduction to Saint-Simonianism in Restoration Paris, their early careers as railways entrepreneurs, and the dizzying heights they reached ultimately in Napoleon III's Second Empire. It is equally a social and cultural history of Jews in France, addressing the means through which the Pereires managed their business empire and the role played by family life in its success. It will appeal to teachers and students interested in French and Jewish history, and to the general reader of biography.




Herminie and Fanny Pereire


Book Description

Herminie and Fanny Pereire were sisters-in-law, married to the eminent Jewish bankers and Saint-Simonian socialists Emile and Isaac. They were also mother and daughter. This book, a companion to the author's acclaimed Emile and Isaac Pereire (2015), sheds new light on elite Jewish families in nineteenth-century France. Drawing on the family archives, it traces the Pereires across a century of major social and political change, from the Napoleonic period to the cusp of the First World War, revealing the active role they played as bourgeois women both within and outside the family. It offers insights into Jewish assimilation, embourgeoisement and gender relations, through the lens of one of the most fascinating families of the century.




Mathematics and Social Utopias in France


Book Description

A mathematician, a social reformer within Saint-Simon's utopian-socialist movement, and later a prosperous banker, Olinde Rodrigues is a fascinating figure of the city of Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century. Since archival resources on Rodrigues are not abundant and since they are scattered throughout a variety of archives studying him presents difficult historiographic challenges. These are met for the first time in this book, written by a team of mathematicians, historians of mathematics, and historians of culture and society for people interested in any of these fields.




The Cross and the Pear Tree


Book Description

Tracing the dramatic lives, through 500 years, of the old and distinguished Sephardic Jewish family from whom he is descended, Victor Perera brilliantly re-creates the history not only of his own people but of an entire culture. The story he tells begins in Spain in the fifteenth century, when the Sephardim are offered a choice of conversion, exile or death. It is the story of a richly flourishing tradition - intellectual, religious, worldly and spiritual - interrupted by massively cruel events; a story of persecution, escape and renewal, carrying us from the Iberian Peninsula across Europe to the Holy Land and Central America. And the Pere(i)ras whose lives we enter are both fascinating in themselves and emblematic of the Sephardic diaspora created by the Inquisition and the Expulsion - some of them, under threat of torture and execution, capitulating to the Cross or becoming Marranos, crypto-Jews who practiced their ancestral religion in secret; others remaining loyal to the pear tree that became their symbol and crest. Among the Marranos: Ana Pereira, a merchant's daughter, a Sephardic convert in Portugal who, at age fifteen, was sentenced to wear penitential raiment and undergo spiritual penances in prison, where, under torture, she incriminated fifteen of her close relations. Among the reclaimed: the fabulously wealthy magnate and author Abraham Israel Pereira, who participated in the excommunication of philosopher Baruch Spinoza; and the beautiful Maria Nunes, who was abducted to Shakespeare's England, and rejected the marriage proposal of a duke and Queen Elizabeth's entreaties on his behalf, marrying instead a cousin in Amsterdam's first Jewish wedding. In nineteenth-centuryFrance we follow the meteoric rise of the brothers Emile and Isaac Pereire, who founded the French railroads and the Credit Mobilier banking system. Over the centuries, the stories of Pereras in all walks of life - among them rabbis and Kabbalistic scholars in the Holy Land - unfold




Bibliography of European Economic and Social History


Book Description

This bibliographical guide contains 10,000 references to the economic and social history of 30 European countries during the period 1700-1939. More than 3000 periodicals have been consulted to obtain references, as well as books, edited collections and conference proceedings. The information is listed in categories such as industry, agriculture, finance, migration, labour conditions, urban communities and organizations. Full publication details are included, so that references may be located easily.




Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France


Book Description

Saint-Simonians were a group of young engineers and doctors who proposed original solutions to the social and banking crises of the early nineteenth century. Through an examination of the lives, ideals and activities of these men and women, the book analyses the influence of the Saint-Simonians on nineteenth-century French society.




Paris, City of Dreams


Book Description

"Armchair historians in particular will appreciate McAuliffe’s readable yet detailed history supplemented with illustrations and bibliography." Booklist, Starred Review Acclaimed historian Mary McAuliffe vividly recaptures the Paris of Napoleon III, Claude Monet, and Victor Hugo as Georges Haussmann tore down and rebuilt Paris into the beautiful City of Light we know today. Paris, City of Dreams traces the transformation of the City of Light during Napoleon III’s Second Empire into the beloved city of today. Together, Napoleon III and his right-hand man, Georges Haussmann, completely rebuilt Paris in less than two decades—a breathtaking achievement made possible not only by the emperor’s vision and Haussmann’s determination but by the regime’s unrelenting authoritarianism, augmented by the booming economy that Napoleon fostered. Yet a number of Parisians refused to comply with the restrictions that censorship and entrenched institutional taste imposed. Mary McAuliffe follows the lives of artists such as Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Claude Monet, as well as writers such as Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, and the poet Charles Baudelaire, while from exile, Victor Hugo continued to fire literary broadsides at the emperor he detested. McAuliffe brings to life a pivotal era encompassing not only the physical restructuring of Paris but also the innovative forms of banking and money-lending that financed industrialization as well as the city’s transformation. This in turn created new wealth and lavish excess, even while producing extreme poverty. More deeply, change was occurring in the way people looked at and understood the world around them, given the new ease of transportation and communication, the popularization of photography, and the emergence of what would soon be known as Impressionism in art and Naturalism and Realism in literature—artistic yearnings that would flower in the Belle Epoque. Napoleon III, whose reign abruptly ended after he led France into a devastating war against Germany, has been forgotten. But the Paris that he created has endured, brought to vivid life through McAuliffe’s rich illustrations and evocative narrative.




Across the Borders


Book Description

Until now we have only had relatively narrow economic studies comparing investments in railways with investments in other fields of individual economies. 'Across the Borders' not only opens the door for fundamental new insights into a trans-national view of railway history, but also contributes to a breakthrough in the wider study of the subject, providing the first extensive historical investigation of the worldwide system of railway financing. This book provides a wide introduction to how financiers, governments and entrepreneurs in Europe managed to face the challenges of constructing and maintaining an integrated railway network, both in their own countries and their colonies. This volume offers analysis from a selection of experts exploring the trans-national investment policies of railway construction based on numerous historical case-studies. The chapters provide insight into the international opportunities that existed for railway financing, from the perspective of economic, social, transport and railway history. With contributions from authors from 19 countries the volume is a truly international work that will be of interest to academic researchers, museum staff, archivists, and anyone who has an interest in the history and development of railways.




The Fatal Embrace


Book Description

Anti-Semitism is on the rise. And organized anti-Semitism is moving from the fringes to the center of public life. Now Ginsberg puts the new anti-Jew feelings under the powerful microscope of history and documents the uses of organized anti-Semitism on the national political agenda.




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