Editing Rothschild family (section)

== Conspiracy theories ==
{{See also|List of conspiracy theories#Antisemitic conspiracy theories|Antisemitic trope#Controlling the global financial system}}

Over more than two centuries,<ref name="Random Variables 1984" /><ref name="Ferguson, Niall 1998" /> the Rothschild family has frequently been the subject of [[conspiracy theories]].<ref name=conspiracy1>{{cite book|last1=McConnachie|first1=James|last2=Tudge|first2=Robin|title=The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories|edition=Second|year=2008|publisher=Rough Guides Ltd|location=London|isbn=9781858282817|url=https://archive.org/details/roughguidetocons0000mcco/page/n3/mode/2up?q=rothschild|pages=244–246}}</ref><ref>{{cite book
  | title     = Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice
  | url     = https://archive.org/details/antisemitismhist00levy_141
  | url-access = limited
  | first     = Richard S.
  | last      = Levy
  | page      = [https://archive.org/details/antisemitismhist00levy_141/page/n685 624]
  | isbn      = 978-1-85109-439-4
  | publisher = ABC-CLIO
  | year      = 2005
  }}</ref><ref>{{cite book
  | title     = The History of Anti-semitism: From Voltaire to Wagner
  | first     = Leon
  | last      = Poliakov
  | page      = 343
  | isbn      = 978-0-8122-1865-7
  | publisher = University of Pennsylvania Press
  | year      = 2003
  }}</ref> These theories take differing forms, such as claiming that the family controls the world's wealth and financial institutions<ref>{{cite book
  | title     = Roots of hate
  | url     = https://archive.org/details/rootshateantisem00brus_487
  | url-access = limited
  | first     = William
  | last      = Brustein
  | page      = [https://archive.org/details/rootshateantisem00brus_487/page/n164 147]
  | isbn      = 978-0-521-77478-9
  | publisher = Cambridge University Press
  | year      = 2003
  }}</ref><ref>{{cite book
  | title     = Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present
  | url     = https://archive.org/details/antisemitismmyth00schw
  | url-access = limited
  | first     = Marvin
  | last      = Perry
  | page      = [https://archive.org/details/antisemitismmyth00schw/page/n137 117]
  | isbn      = 978-0-312-16561-1
  | publisher = Palgrave Macmillan
  | year      = 2002
  }}</ref> or encouraged or discouraged wars between governments. Discussing this and similar views, the historian [[Niall Ferguson]] wrote that, {{blockquote|Without wars, nineteenth-century states would have little need to issue bonds. As we have seen, however, wars tended to hit the price of existing bonds by increasing the risk that a debtor state would fail to meet its interest payments in the event of defeat and losses of territory. By the middle of the 19th century, the Rothschilds had evolved from traders into fund managers, carefully tending to their own vast portfolio of government bonds. Now having made their money, they stood to lose more than they gained from conflict. [...] The Rothschilds had decided the outcome of the [[Napoleonic Wars]] by putting their financial weight behind Britain. Now they would [...] sit on the sidelines.<ref name="Money 2008 page 91">''The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World'', (London 2008), p. 91.</ref>}}

Many conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family arise from [[Antisemitism|antisemitic prejudice]] and various [[antisemitic trope]]s.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m5Er9ELOwQkC&pg=PA104|title=Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction|page=104|author=Jovan Byford|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2011|quote=... a further and more direct link with the conspiracy culture's antisemitic apparent in the treatment of the Rothschild family. Ever since the nineteenth century, the Rothchilds, who combined Jewishness, financial wealth and international connections, have been the epitome of the international Jewish conspiracy (Barkun, 2006). The family name continues to feature in conspiratorial narratives to the present day, although writers of the post-1945 era have tended to play down their importance.|isbn=9780230349216}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qMIDrggs8TsC&pg=PA82|title=Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia|chapter=Antisemitism|author=Markku Ruotsila|editor= Peter Knight|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2003|page=82|quote = This new economic antisemitism issued in a variety of full-blown conspiracy theories in the 1870s through the 1890s. In these conspiracy theories all the perceived evils of modern capitalism and industrialism were ascribed to Jews, ... and, on a more precise level, because of the purported machinations of identifiable Jewish financiers. The latter type of theories tended to centre around the supposed power of the Rothschild banking family and those of its U.S. agents that were central in various reconstruction and public debt refinancing schemes after the Civil War...|isbn=9781576078129}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred-year Retrospective on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion|page= 189|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DV1S9dpW2aQC&pg=PA189|author=Richard Allen Landes and Steven T. Katz|publisher=NYU Press|year= 2012|quote=... there are anti-Semitic claims of a vast conspiracy by Jews that structurally replicate the ''[[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion|Protocols]]'' without mentioning the hoax document. Another way conspiracy theories try to avoid the label of anti-Semitic is to argue that there is a vast conspiracy by the "Rothschild family" or the "Khazars" or some other entity...|isbn= 9780814749456}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yXYKAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA110|page= 110|author=David Norman Smith|chapter=Anti-Semitism|title=Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities|editor=Carl Skutsch|publisher=Routledge|year=2013|volume=1 (A-F)|quote=The great banking barons of the Rothschild family became, in anti-Semitic fantasy, living emblems of Jews everywhere. ... For anti-Semites, socialism and bank capitalism are just two sides of the Jewish conspiracy against order and tradition...|isbn= 9781135193881}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|pages=[https://archive.org/details/behindcloseddoor0000stre/page/146 146]–47|url=https://archive.org/details/behindcloseddoor0000stre|url-access=registration|title=Behind Closed Doors: The Power and Influence of Secret Societies|author=Michael Streeter|publisher=New Holland Publishers|year=2008|quote=When it comes to conspiracy theories and the secret societies that supposedly run out world ... The finger of suspicion often points to bankers and Jews – and often to Jewish bankers – as the moneymen behind this world plot. Chief among the 'suspects' are the Rothschilds, the Jewish banking dynasty ... Yet there is little or nothing that the Rothschild bankers have done that is not perfectly explicable by normal banking practices. ... The fact that the Rothschilds feature at the centre of so many conspiracy theories is perhaps no coincidence. For it is sadly the case that many claims alleging secret societies have contained more than a tinge of anti-Semitism.|isbn=9781845379377}}{{Dead link|date=May 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZWAslJvCK3IC&pg=PA296|title=Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity|publisher=NYU Press|page=296|year=2002|quote=[Conspiracy theorist Jan van] [[Jan van Helsing|Helsing]]'s dubious sources, his constant repetition of Jewish names as members of private and public organizations, and above all his emphasis on the assets and powerbroking influence of the Rothschilds as the top Illuminati family leave no doubt that his conspiracy theories are aimed at Jewish targets.|isbn=9780814732373}}</ref>