Rothschild and Freshfields founders linked to slavery
Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.
Financial Times: Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.
Are we suprised?
a tradition proudly continued to this day
The FT said Freshfields acted as trustees for clients. Big hairy deal. And Rothschilds took security over slaves owned by debtors. Again, where’s the story?
Playftseforme
Not really so much of a story as an interesting bit of history.
No issue with modern law firm/bank at all of course. A large part of our empire was based on slavery, invasion, colonisation and brutal acts of barbarism – but times have moved on.
Now we have no empire and the brutal acts of barbarism are mercifully few – save for some acting on programmes on TV… but there is an off switch for those 🙂
the big hairy deal would be that such actions would be inconsistent with a position that opposed slavery.
personally i can’t get too excited about the actions of any person or institution 300 years ago when times and morality were different, and it has no bearing on what the current institution does. but as charon says, it’s an interesting point.
The FT ran the story under the headline ‘Rothschild and Freshfields founders linked to slavery’. Turns out the links were pretty anodyne.
playftseforme – yes… rather non storyish…
I know a few people at Freshfields… good firm…. obviously!