Jewish agricultural colonies in the Russian Empire were first established in Kherson Governorate in 1806.
The Ukase of December 9, 1804 allowed Jews for the first time in Russia to purchase land for farming settlements.
Jews were provided with various incentives: tax abatements, reduced land prices, and exemption from military service.
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By 1900 there were about 100,000 Jewish colonists throughout Russia.
The Jew who brought the Russian Empire to its knees - twice.
Re: The Jew who brought the Russian Empire to its knees - twice.
Re: The Jew who brought the Russian Empire to its knees - twice.
Takahashi and Schiff met for the first time in April 1904 in London, where Takahashi vice-president of the Bank of Japan had been trying to gain a loan for the ongoing war. Before returning to Japan, Takahashi took part in an official dinner, where he told Schiff about his fears that the loan would be refused. Schiff listened carefully to the story about the successes of Emperor Nicholas II.
Schiff privately abhorred the Tsar, because of the Kishinev pogrom. Despite this conversation, Takahashi forgot about the meeting with the banker, and so when he received a message that Schiff wanted to meet him, he did not remember who he was. When he wanted to find out something about this person, he was told: “A member of the American bank Kuhn, Loeb. A powerful force on the world money market, a main element of international capital. A Jew”.
Their next meeting resulted in a long-lasting friendship between Schiff and Takahashi.
At first, the banker proposed a loan of 5 million pounds, but finally, the sum was increased to 200 million dollars. Schiff not only supported the Japanese side with his own capital but also encouraged members of the First National Bank and the National City Bank to support Japan.
In 1906, Jacob Schiff visited Japan for the first time. He was received by the Meiji Emperor and was the first foreigner in history to be awarded the Order of the Rising Sun.
During the ceremony, Schiff broke the imperial palace rules and raised a glass to the Emperor, comparing him with the American president George Washington: “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
Schiff was also invited to private dinners at the houses of the former prime minister of Japan, Okuma Shigenobu, the President of Daiichi Bank, Shibusawa Eiichi, and the mayor of Tokyo, Ozaki Yukio. ...
Banker came back to the US with Takahashi’s fifteen-year-old daughter, who spent three years at his place.
Jacob Schiff described his stay in Japan in a letter to his family:
“Everybody from the Mikado down does his utmost to be kind to us, and we have therefore been given an opportunity to study every phase of life in Japan. The day after our arrival in Tokyo, the Emperor received me in a special audience, bestowed upon me the Order of the Rising Sun, and gave a luncheon in my honor for about fifteen people. (…)
After this, a succession of dinners and garden festivals followed, on the part of the American Chargé d’Affaires, the Minister of Finance, the directors of the Bank of Japan, etc. (…)”.
The Cooperation of Jacob Schiff and Takahashi Korekiyo Regarding the Financial Support for the War with Russia by OLGA BARBASIEWICZ
Re: The Jew who brought the Russian Empire to its knees - twice.
And there was Moisei Ginsburg, a Jew born in poverty. A Russian patriot, who made the voyage of the Russian Fleet to Tsushima possible.
Another huge problem was coal. Rozhestvensky knew that no neutral power would allow him to buy coal in its ports, so he needed foreign steamers to supply the squadron with coal throughout its long voyage. A deal was struck with a German company, the Hamburg-American Line, which promised to deliver the necessary amounts of coal to the armada’s ports of call outside Russia. And the squadron also needed other supplies delivered to it. Rozhestvensky started looking for a merchant who could be entirely trusted. Eventually, such a person was found.
His name was Ginsburg. Moisei Ginsburg was born in 1851 in Russia to a destitute Jewish family.
At fifteen, he left the confining world of the Pale and hitchhiked his way to Europe. He pumped water from the holds of a schooner for forty-six days, while the ship slowly made her way from Liverpool to New York; he built railroads in the American West; in Yokohama he sold goods to Western sailors. At the age of twenty-six, he opened his own business and started catering to ships in eastern waters—for nostalgic reasons, preferably, the Russian navy. Ginsburg’s was a floating supermarket. He could deliver food or boots, books or soap, depending on what the client ordered.
He became the chief supplier for Port Arthur and stayed there during the first weeks of the war.
Four days before the sinking of the Petropavlovsk, Admiral Makarov sent Ginsburg to St. Petersburg and gave him a flattering letter of recommendation. But it appeared that Makarov had underestimated the merchant’s fame.
When Naval Minister Avelan complained to the tsar that Rozhestvensky’s squadron would face supply problems, Nicholas quickly retorted, “But you have Ginsburg!”
That response was the equivalent of a contract. Ginsburg was issued credit for ten million rubles. He promised to supply the squadron with all the essentials. Even official—and highly sensitive—correspondence between Rozhestvensky and St. Petersburg would often go through his couriers.
The Tsar's Last Armada: The Epic Journey to the Battle of Tsushima by Constantine Pleshakov