The Kings of Algiers How Two Jjewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond- November 14, 2023 by Julie Kalman

 Here are the essential works on Jewish Banking and Merchant Families 

The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family by Ron Chernow

Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and The Making of an Empire by Joseph Sassoon

The House of Rothchild: Volume 1and 2: Money's Prophets 1798 to 1848 by Niall Ferguson

To these essential histories of Jewish banking families I am very glad to be able to let my readers know of a new book, The Kings of Algiers How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond by Julie Kalman, that is a very important edition to Jewish banking and merchant families scholarship.

"At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, the Bacri brothers and their nephew, Naphtali Busnach, were perhaps the most notorious Jews in the Mediterranean. Based in the strategic port of Algiers, their interconnected families traded in raw goods and luxury items, brokered diplomatic relations with the Ottomans, and lent vital capital to warring nations. For the French, British, and Americans, who competed fiercely for access to trade and influence in the region, there was no getting around the Bacris and the Busnachs. The Kings of Algiers traces the rise and fall of these two trading families over four tumultuous decades in the nineteenth century.

In this panoramic book, Julie Kalman restores their story—and Jewish history more broadly—to the histories of trade, corsairing, and high-stakes diplomacy in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars and their aftermath. Jacob Bacri dined with Napoleon himself. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Horatio Nelson considered strategies to circumvent the Bacris’ influence. As the families’ ambitions grew, so did the perils, from imprisonment and assassination to fraud and collapse.

The Kings of Algiers brings vividly to life an age of competitive imperialism and nascent nationalism and demonstrates how people and events on the periphery shaped perceptions and decisions in the distant metropoles of the world’s great nations." From the publisher, Princeton University Press

Unlike the Rothchilds and the Warburgs, the Bacris family was more at the mercy of the rulers they served, the deys of Algeria.

The book focuses on the first four decades of the 19th century. The Algerian rulers were in the practice of taking European and American ships captive and enslaving their crews. Kalman details the first rise of America to international power as the newly independent country fought back.

Algerian Royal politics were fraught with harsh rivalries for succession. Numerous rules were often killed by rivals.

The Bacris family members were often at odds with one another, borrowing among themselves without always repaying. 

Unlike the Rothchilds, Warburgs and Sassoons, the Bacris family did not have as strong an intelligence network and were not as unified. In one very telling way, as Kalman details, all of these families benefited from their status as "outsiders". It was not embarrassing to borrow from them and they were not normally perceived as having non-commercial ties to competing players. 

The Kings of Algiers How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond by Julie Kalman is extremely well documented and written in very elegant prose. I highly recommend it to any one interested in early 19th century history and especially to those into Jewish history.

"I completed my B.A. (Hons) at Monash University in 1992, and I have an M.A. (1998) and a PhD (2002) from the University of Melbourne. I am interested in the effects of Jewish emancipation on the non-Jewish world, ranging across French, British, and Mediterranean settings. I have other interests, too, and I have published on the history of migration to Australia, and the Eurovision Song Contest." From Julie Kalman 

Mel Ulm