Download PDF The Richest Man Who Ever Lived The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger Greg Steinmetz Books

Product details Paperback 304 pages Publisher Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (August 9, 2016) Language English ISBN-10 9781451688566 ISBN-13 978-1451688566 ASIN 1451688563

The Richest Man Who Ever Lived The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger Greg Steinmetz Books Reviews

• Greg Steinmetz successfully brings to light the extraordinary life and achievements of the multidimensional Jacob who was born in 1459 and died in 1525 in what was known as the Holy Roman Empire. Today, Jacob is more known for his philanthropic works, especially his public housing project in Augsburg, Germany, than for being both a businessman and a statesman.
  
  Jacob, who grew up in a family of well-to-do merchants, became the premier banker of Europe besides being an industrialist, a trader, and at times a speculator. This business man played a key role in the destruction of both the Hanseatic League and copper cartel. Ironically, Jacob was a monopolist at heart, who was determined to control whatever market in which he was interested. He also had no problem in squeezing his workers. In addition, Jacob had a keen understanding of the importance of both accounting and auditing while building his banking empire in Europe. Finally, he had an informational edge thanks to his comprehensive network of information-gatherers.
  
  Jacob was also tough on his own family. He bullied his family members to do his bidding both during his life and after his death. However, no one within Jacob’s family could match his skills, his conviction, his steely temperament, and his ambition. The solvent firm that he created and gave away to his nephews did not die as much as fade away. The family members of Jacob became old money and no longer cared about the firm when it finally fell into bankruptcy in 1637.
  
  Jacob, whether he liked it or not, also became a statesman. He was instrumental in bankrolling the Habsburgs and turning it into a political powerhouse that survived until the WWI. Both Maximilian I and Charles V of the Habsburg dynasty owed their ascent to the money of Jacob. His chutzpah in bullying both dynasts to achieve his ends is truly astonishing. Furthermore, Jacob did not hesitate to fund wars against his own people in the name of social order. In addition, he played a decisive role in overturning the church’s ban on usury that was detrimental to the prosperity of capitalism. Finally, Jacob fought against Martin Luther, the key figure in the Protestant Reformation, who was imperiling his business interests in the name of religious purity.
  
  In summary, Mr. Steinmetz does not exaggerate when he calls Jacob the most powerful businessman of all times. Of all the businessmen in history, Nathan Rothschild came closest in matching his influence.
• “The Richest Man In The World” is pop history, designed to appeal to modern readers by putting a modern gloss on a medieval man. As to its central figure, the German banker Jacob Smith (note--I had to use a fake last name, and then the first name throughout, because otherwise this review won't get posted!), it may get the core of his story right. Or it may not, because in much of its ancillary history, it is grossly inaccurate—to the degree it makes the reader uncertain what in the core story is actually accurate.
  
  The core of the story is that Jacob was both one of the first semi-modern bankers and also a key player in much of the political activity of the early Renaissance, in particular in the Holy Roman Empire, in particular Germany. Jacob played a key role in the career of the Hapsburg Maximilian I, in both his election as Holy Roman Emperor and in enabling him to conduct various wars. Jacob played a similar role for Maximilian’s grandson, the very famous and fabulously powerful Charles V.
  
  Jacob was not so much original as lucky and disciplined—he was the Warren Buffett of his time, having no special talent that many others did not also have, but starting with significant wealth and connections given to him by his forefathers, he parlayed that into massive wealth by a consistent application of core business principles. And as with Warren Buffet, outsiders ascribed genius to what was actually a combination of good luck and good management.
  
  That’s not to say Jacob’s story isn’t interesting. It is very interesting. For one, seeing history through the activities of someone outside the usual aristocratic oligarchy is inherently interesting. Moreover, Steinmetz writes well, and narrates the story with reasonable vigor. So it’s an enjoyable read.
  
  But let’s get on to the inaccuracies and errors. My criticisms are not mere pedantry. There are probably many more errors in the book than those I list—I know little about Jacob or the Holy Roman Empire of the period, so I suspect there are many other howlers that I just missed. My interests lie in Hungarian history and Roman Catholic theology, so the errors I detect mostly relate to those areas. In no particular order
  
  1) Steinmetz repeatedly refers to the Western European social framework of the time (late Fifteenth and early Sixteenth Centuries) as a “caste system.” He says, for example, that “Jacob began his career as a commoner, the lowest rung in the European caste system. If he failed to bow before a baron or clear the a knight on a busy street, he risked getting skewered with a sword.” None of this is true.
  
  The European system lacked all characteristics of a true caste system (i.e., India’s), not that Steinmetz identifies any supposed caste other than “noble” and “commoner.” A true caste system does not have “rungs,” which implies movement among classes, and anyway “commoner” as such wasn’t a rung in Europe. While Europe did have a class structure, European medieval classes were quite fluid (extremely fluid at times); they were not divided into rigid sub-classes; marriage was not endogamous. Moreover, different areas of “Europe” differed wildly in their class system—for example, in the death of serfdom West of the Elbe, and its resurgence east of the Elbe. Steinmetz himself notes that Augsburg, Jacob’s home city, was a “free city” that administered its own justice and was subject only to the “remote and distant emperor.” Finally, nobles could not randomly skewer commoners. This was not feudal Japan. The rule of law emerged early in Europe, and while doubtless injustice was frequent, citizens on the street, whatever their rank, could not be randomly murdered without severe punishment, especially in a free city. Steinmetz seems unaware of all of this.
  
  2) Steinmetz shows a total lack of understanding of much of Roman Catholic medieval theology. Early on, he telegraphs his ignorance with the astonishing statement “There were two types of clerics. There were conservatives, who blindly followed Rome, and reformers like Erasmus of Rotterdam, the greatest intellectual of the age.” Apparently there was nobody in between.
  
  Steinmetz spends quite a bit of time on Jacob’s role in the structuring and collection of indulgences, a key focus of Martin Luther’s reforms. But Steinmetz totally fails to understand what indulgences are. He claims that they “were called indulgences because Rome used them to indulge wickedness.” This is apparently not a joke. (The name really comes from the Latin indulgentia, from indulgeo, “to be kind or tender”.) Beyond nomenclature, though, Steinmetz doesn’t seem to understand the difference in Roman Catholic theology between hell and purgatory. It is not true that, by selling indulgences, “The pope could take the meanest sinner and, with a blessing, secure him a place in heaven and save him from purgatory.” In Roman Catholic theology, attaining heaven requires repentance and absolution, and indulgences have no effect on either of those. Instead, indulgences are supposed to reduce “the temporal punishment due to sin,” i.e., time in purgatory, which is a “waiting pen” prior to heaven—but everyone in purgatory is already guaranteed to attain heaven. All this was very clear to medieval people, as any study of the Crusades, for example, will show. Steinmetz compounds this lack of understanding by bizarrely claiming that “Kill a baby? Deflower the Virgin Mary? Indulgences absolved them all.” No, indulgences absolved nothing, and certainly not sins such as killing a baby, which would require absolution from a bishop, not a mere priest, after confession (as abortion always has in the Roman church).
  
  3) Steinmetz repeats the old legend that Europeans consumed spices used to “mask the taste of rotten meat.” This has been repeatedly debunked, and makes no sense anyway—if you were rich enough to afford spices, you were certainly rich enough to not eat rotten meat.
  
  4) The book badly needs an editor who’s not drunk or a Millennial. Vocabulary errors litter the book. It’s “wring [money] out of the citizenry,” not “ring out.” It’s “illiquid,” not “ill-liquid.” Discussing Jacob’s bequests, on page 233 Jacob left specific amounts of “millions” of florins; on page 237 those amounts are now “billions.” Also, “1427” is incorrectly used for “1527” in the same discussion. Plus other minor factual errors—for example, medieval coins were not cast; they were die-struck.
  
  5) Dracula was not a “Transylvanian count.” He had nothing to do with Transylvania; that’s an invention of Bram Stoker in the 20th Century, for his fictional character. Vlad III, known as Dracula, was voivode (i.e., ruler) of Wallachia, an independent principality now part of Romania and never part of Transylvania. And he was not a count. He did not impale Turks in Hungary, as Steinmetz claims, because he was not Hungarian.
  
  And, conversely, the peasant rebellion leader György Dózsa WAS Hungarian, not Romanian, as Steinmetz claims. He was a Székely, a Hungarian from Transylvania.
  
  6) One of Jacob’s longest-lasting and most profitable investments was in Hungarian copper mines, beginning in 1494. Steinmetz claims “Other German merchants thought Jacob a fool when he bought his first Hungarian copper mine . . . . For them, Hungary was too savage and unpredictable for investment.” This is entirely false. At the time, Hungary was the largest kingdom in Europe, a cultivated ancillary center of the Renaissance and wholly integrated as a key member of the kingdoms of Europe, and probably less savage and unpredictable than Germany, with its patchwork of principalities. Steinmetz seems to have no grasp of overall European history.
  
  7) Erasmus did not have syphilis, despite Steinmetz repeatedly claiming he did. A second’s worth of research shows this definitively. Nor did was Cortes personally the first person to bring syphilis back from the New World—Cortes first went to the New World, as a very-not-important person, in 1504, and syphilis appeared in Europe in 1494.
  
  8) Under customary law, prior to the re-creation of Roman law, it was not true of the manor system that “Everything belonged to everyone.” Customary law was very complex, of course, and involved various informal property arrangements, along with strict rules against alienation. But it was hardly generally communal property, other than specific pieces of property used in common (hence, the “commons”).
  
  9) Steinmetz claims “The Janissaries were children of Christian slaves, raised as soldiers.” Actually, they were (kidnapped) children of Christian free peasants, made (military) slaves and forcibly converted to Islam.
  
  So, while “The Richest Man Who Ever Lived” tells a quite interesting story, it’s impossible to rely on anything it says. Steinmetz appears to be an auto-didact who relied too much on “auto.” He seems to have read widely, with, as he says, the help of a translation app, but perhaps not widely enough, and he desperately needed a skilled and knowledgeable editor. Ultimately, that makes his book barely worth reading.
• I am glad I didn't read the negative reviews of this book before I read it myself. Some reviewers blasted the author for bad and clumsy writing. I noticed none of it. The writing is simple, succinct, informative and easy to read. The stories are not chronological, but rather topical, so there are overlaps in the way the chapters flow through history. It worked fine for me.
  
  I was delighted by how much I learned about the Renaissance. The period came alive in front of my eyes. How do you do international business without telephones, fax machines, the Internet, and travel other than walking or by coach. How do you survive when the church can just accuse you of heresy and burn you at the stake if they so choose? How do you trade when the roads are infested with highway robbers?
  
  I found The Richest Man Who Ever Lived a highly readable and informative book that inspired me to find more material about history during that time.