Financiers and The British State: The Case of Sir Ernest Cassel

Ernest Cassel cannot be proposed as being in any sense a representative City figure, if any such existed in view of the rather greater variety of City life than simpler sociological analyses assume. ¹ Indeed much of his interest derives from his atypicality. He was, however, an important figure, in view of the range of his business activities and of his highly influential national and international financial, political and social connections. Even a sketchy survey of his career opens up a series of intriguing suggestions concerning the roles of international financiers in the period of unprecedented expansion of the world economy which stretched through the final quarter of the nineteenth century and on to 1914. At the very least it created historically new openings for the shrewd, ambitious and opportunistic businessman, among whom Cassel was supreme.