Overview:
The book 1873 by Liaquat Ahamed examines the first global financial crisis, triggered by the collapse of a massive bond-driven boom in the mid-19th century. Railroads fueled speculation and borrowing, but when the bubble burst in the early 1870s, markets crashed worldwide, governments defaulted, and misguided currency reforms deepened the downturn. The crisis led to decades of deflation, weakened Reconstruction in the U.S., and hastened the Ottoman Empire’s decline. Although the Rothschilds had avoided the bubble, they were scapegoated, feeding into rising antisemitism.
Ahamed combines financial analysis with human stories to show the crisis’s sweeping global impact.