Mason,

This is just a side interest of mine, but it seems to me I might perhaps
correct and extend your thoughts.

As I understand it, after the diaspora Jews were just one component amongst
international traders.  The crucial change came much later, with the
irruption of Islam.  This erected cultural barriers, and Jewish traders
suddenly got exclusive control of cross border trade by default.  This seems
to me the single most important fact in the story, and all the rest follows.

Note for instance that when Harun ar Rashid sent a gift of a white elephant
to Charlemagne, it was Isaac the Jew who arranged the transport.  There were
also plenty of complaints both at the Carolingian court, and from Rome,
about the extent to which Jewish officials had control of financial affairs,
even within the Papacy.

The most important single source from the Dark Ages however is surely the
Book of Roads by the Abbasid head of secret services, Ibn Khurdadhbah (836
CE) – which gives a short account of the control of all international trade
routes, from Sweden to China, by people he calls the Radanite Jews

Although this near absolute monopoly of world trade faltered after about
1000 AD, with the rise of Venice etc, Jews continue ever more to be
prominent in economic management of affairs.

When William conquered England, he brought with him the Jews of Rouen, to
manage the financial affairs of the new kingdom.  These chaps would not need
to swear personal loyalty to the king as they were, as I understand it, his
private property.

These sort of arrangements run on and on down the centuries.  In the 14th
century, Edward III invites in Jews from Lombardy to arrange his finances
(and bankrupts them as I recall).  Such arrangements were found throughout
Europe at that time.  When the Bank of England was set up in the late 17th
century, we find Seraphidic Jews from Holland at the heart of the affair. 
Ricardo seems to be just part of the same sort of story.

Whilst we might deplore racist aspects in Rudyard Kipling's tales, he at
least wrote for a audience who were then well enough up on history to spot
that his (basically accurate) accounts of the doings of international Jewry
in Medieval Europe were mirrored in his own times by the Rothchilds

I am afraid I cannot make sense of this idea about American Colleges and
robber barons.  History is always more complicated than that.  Its amusing
to look at just how complicated history can be.  Take Alexander del Mar. 
Milton Friedman held that del Mar had been sacked from his post due to his
Jewish ethnicity.  But this looks very dubious.  Much more likely it was due
to his writings on  "monetary crimes" in Britain in the 17th century, and
the USA in the 19th century.  The Jewish matter seems to me a kind of smoke
screen, to hide the true nature of his expulsion from academic life. 
Stranger still, when del Mar had been excluded and forgotten, it was Ezra
Pound, in the notoriously anti-semitic period of his life, who, locked in a
mental hospital due (fundamentally) to his errant views on the political
economy, spent his days trying to arrange to get del Mar's work back into
print.  Ultimately, history is surely always stranger than any simple story
we can come up with

Rob Tye, York UK

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