The Economic History of the Jewish People

by Attali, Jacques

• ISBN13: 9782747214575
• ISBN10: 2747214575
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-30
• Publisher: Intl Pub Marketing

Summary

The story many have told can lead one to believe in the existence of a united Jewish people: rich, powerful, placed under centralized command and responsible for establishing a worldwide power strategy through money. Such a belief would merge with the fantasies that have spread across every century from Trajan to Constantine, from Matthew to Luther, from Marlow to Voltaire, from the Protocol of the Elders of Zion to Mein Kampf, to all that which is propagated today via the anonymity of the Internet. This is the story ripe to be challenged and retold. Herein lies the history of the relationship between the Jewish people, money and the world at large. The author is well aware of the subversive nature of this subject. It is a topic that has unleashed so many controversies and brought about so many massacres as to have become a veritable taboo, a topic that must not be evoked under any circumstance for fear of provoking some age-old catastrophe. Today, no one dares write on this topic, as if centuries of study have served no purpose other than to fuel book burning. It remains nevertheless in the best interest of modern mankind to understand how those who discovered monotheism also founded the ethics of capitalism, how some became its primary brokers and leading bankers, while others its most unrelenting enemy. In this book the author tackles the facts and the lies of the history of the relationship between the Jewish people, money and the world at large. "It seems essential that our world, and Jewish people themselves, face a part of their history that they may not care for but of which they have every reason to be proud."

Author Biography

Jacques ATTALI is an eminent economic advisor and was recently nominated by French President Nicolas Sarkozyas the head of the Commission to promote French Growth. From 1981 to 1991 he was special advisor to Francois Mitterrand and in 1990 he became the first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, EBRD. Currently he is chairman of A&A, an international consultancy company and the founder and president of PlaNet Finance, an international non-profit organisation that uses the Internet to combat poverty concentrating on the microfinance sector.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. VII
Foreword	p. IX
The Economic History of the Jewish People	p. 1
Genesis (-2000/+70)	p. 5
To Egypt: From Barter to Money	p. 6
Ish and Adam	p. 6
From Abraham to Jacob	p. 8
Israel in Egypt: From Silver to Gold	p. 13
Wealth in Exile	p. 13
Improving Economics	p. 16
Exile and Liberty	p. 18
The Meaning of Words: Nomadism and Abstraction	p. 22
To Be and to Have	p. 23
Money	p. 23
To Pay	p. 25
Value	p. 25
Commerce	p. 26
Judges and Kings: From Gold to Money	p. 26
Judges	p. 26
Samuel and Saul	p. 31
David and Solomon	p. 32
First Doctrines	p. 35
Judea and Samaria	p. 39
From Nineveh to Babylon	p. 42
First Exile in Babylon: From Money to Finance	p. 44
The Welcome	p. 45
Economic Doctrine in the Diaspora	p. 48
Return from Babylon: From Finance to Ruin	p. 50
The Talent, the Persians, the Temple	p. 50
Alexandria	p. 53
Under Rome	p. 60
The Destruction of the Temple	p. 68
Exodus (70-1096)	p. 71
Rome Without the Temple: the First Nomadic Network	p. 73
The Laws of Occupation: the Money of the Majority	p. 73
The Second War and the First Talmud	p. 79
Christians and Confront Jews Money	p. 83
Productive Money, Fruitless Money	p. 83
Byzantine Imprisonment	p. 88
The Hospitable Vandals: the Need for Merchants	p. 93
Babylon: the Heart of the World	p. 95
The Powerful in Babylonia	p. 96
The Name and the Bill of Exchange	p. 97
The New Economic Doctrine: the Talmud and Money	p. 103
Writing and Money	p. 103
To Love God and All His Riches	p. 104
The Monetary Relation of Things and Bodies	p. 105
An Honest Market: the Just and Fair Price	p. 106
Ownership	p. 107
Women and Land	p. 108
Transmitting	p. 109
Working for Life	p. 110
Intolerable Poverty	p. 113
The Obligation to be Charitable	p. 114
Lending Money	p. 116
A Necessary, Altruistic Society: "to Restore the World"	p. 117
Between Rome and Byzantium: a New Chance for Israel	p. 119
The Pope Against Byzantium	p. 119
The Ultimate Attempt in Judea	p. 121
Happiness in Islam	p. 123
Jewish Merchants and the Birth of Islam	p. 124
Jerusalem and Babylon Give Up Islam	p. 126
Jewish Merchants and the First Jews of the Court	p. 130
Baghdadis and Radhanites	p. 131
Grand Viziers and Poor Jews	p. 133
The Transfer of Cordova	p. 135
The First Christian Bankers	p. 135
Merovingian France	p. 135
The Golden Carolingian Age	p. 137
Feudal Judaism	p. 140
Jews of Trade Fairs	p. 143
The Jewish Merchants Migrate to the West	p. 145
Leviticus (1096-1789)	p. 149
Traveling More to the East (1000)	p. 150
From Byzantium and Islamic Lands: Checks and Accounting	p. 150
Pepper and Paper Money	p. 155
The Rush to the West	p. 156
Lenders and Sales (1000-1260)	p. 157
Market Cities and Ports	p. 157
Community Life	p. 161
Brokers and Artisans	p. 163
Interest of the Jews	p. 165
Relationships with Others: Hatred in Exchange for Rendered Services	p. 173
The Crusades: to Pay and to Die	p. 176
Money without the Jews (1260-1492)	p. 187
New Bankers	p. 187
Changing Memory (1260-1300)	p. 189
The Renaissance through the Great Plague	p. 192
Tuscany and Venetia	p. 196
From Lands of Islam and Poland (1260-1492)	p. 198
Mamluks, Ottomans, and Mongols	p. 198
The Arrival to Eastern Europe	p. 200
Financing Discoveries and Disappearing (1000-1492)	p. 202
The Spanish Hour	p. 202
Sailors and Discovereres	p. 205
Conversos and Marranos	p. 207
Conversions, Exiles, and America	p. 220
Judaism of the East: Substitute Merchants (1492-1700)	p. 225
Islamic Lands	p. 225
In this empire, there were two exceptional Jewish Stories	p. 228
Two Polish Golden Ages	p. 234
Jews of the Prince and Princes without Jews (1492-1700)	p. 242
The Ghetto or Livorno	p. 242
From Luther to Jews of Court	p. 248
Contraband Jews in the Heart of the Capital (1492-1700)	p. 253
From Montaigne to Colbert	p. 253
From Shylock to Cromwell	p. 256
In the Middle of the Money of Others: in Flanders	p. 261
The Three New Worlds (1492-1700)	p. 268
From Africa to India: the Jewish Ship-Owners	p. 268
The Companies of the Indies	p. 269
India and China	p. 271
Spanish Colonies	p. 272
Portuguese Colonies	p. 273
Sugar and Tobacco	p. 274
English Colonies	p. 276
The Birth and Death of Eighteenth Century Nations	p. 278
The Dimming of Islam	p. 278
The End of Poland	p. 279
The First Jew of the Court	p. 282
Court Purveyors and the Industrial Revolution (1700-1800)	p. 284
Jews Who Were Tolerated in France and Italy	p. 284
Court Purveyors: in Germany and Austria	p. 288
Decadence in the Netherlands	p. 294
The Financial Revolution in Great-Britain	p. 296
American Hope	p. 299
Numbers (1789-1945)	p. 303
The Communicators of the Industrial Revolution	p. 305
Like the Others, Every Man for Himself	p. 305
Jews in European Industry: to Communicate	p. 317
The Jewish Bank: In the European Industrial Revolution	p. 321
The Influence of Jewish Banks on European politics of the Nineteenth Century	p. 333
Three Illusions	p. 336
The First Illusion: from Saint-Simon to Enfantin	p. 336
The Second Illusion: from Marx to Drumont	p. 338
The Third Illusion: from Weber to Sombart	p. 345
Four Matrixes	p. 350
The Matrix of Socialism: Russian Judaism until 1917	p. 351
The Matrix of Psychoanalysis: The Jews of Vienna	p. 366
The Matrix of the Americanization of the World: The United States of the Nineteenth Century	p. 369
The Zionism Matrix: The First Glances Towards Palestine	p. 394
The Law of the Number	p. 408
The Death of Empires	p. 408
The Birth of the Soviet Union	p. 414
The New, the Crisis, and the Old	p. 420
Weimar and Wall Street	p. 420
Chicago	p. 426
Hollywood	p. 429
Jerusalem	p. 434
The Economy of the Holocaust	p. 442
The Economy of Taking Power	p. 443
Expropriation	p. 444
Concentration	p. 450
Forced Labor	p. 451
Artisan Holocaust	p. 453
Industrial Annihilation	p. 455
Deuteronomy (1945-)	p. 463
The Land and the Book	p. 465
Return to the Land	p. 466
Is Israel a Jewish State?	p. 486
The Awakening of the Diaspora	p. 489
To Put an End to the Myth about Jewish Money	p. 493
What Is Left of Anti-Semitism?	p. 498
Sedentary Life Cannot Exist without Nomads	p. 503
To Discover	p. 505
To Link	p. 506
To Innovate	p. 507
To Endure	p. 508
The Link to the East: Israel	p. 510
War Objectives and Forms of War	p. 511
Israel Cannot Exist without Palestine	p. 513
From the East to the West	p. 515
The Link to the West: Diasporas	p. 516
Disappearance through Indifference	p. 516
Disappearance through Differences	p. 518
From the West to the East	p. 519
Open up or Disappear	p. 519
Traders between the East and the West	p. 521
Bibliography	p. 525
Index	p. 551
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.