The recent problems of Baring's Bank meant that there were a lot of articles giving details of the Bank's past history, some of which is pertinent to our period. Sitting at home, hoping that the collapse heralded the end of capitalism and would trigger the proletarian revolution (it didn't), Dave Hollins culled the following from the Times of 27 February:

'Originally from the Netherlands, the Baring family moved to Bremen in North Germany, from where Johann Baring emigrated to England in 1717. He settled in Exeter, married a local girl, and conducted a modest business as a wool merchant. But Devon was too sleepy for his three sons, who moved to London to operate as wool and general merchants on a grander scale.

Francis, the most ambitious son, became a director and eventually chairman of the East India Company. Elected to Parliament, he was created a baronet by William Pitt in 1793. Guided by experts from Amsterdam, then the financial capital of the world, Sir Francis established a bank in 1762, and rapidly expanded from merely financing the wool trade into shipping and all aspects of international trade.

From then, there was no stopping the Barings. One of Sir Francis's sons went to the fledgling United States of America, married into its emergent high society, and negotiated the Louisiana Purchase from France. He came home to be created the first Lord Ashbourne and appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. In Europe, the Barings arranged loans to France for reparations after Waterloo; they became financial agents for both the United States and Imperial Russian governments, and issued bonds for the governments of China and Japan.

Such was their influence in the High Victorian age that the Duc de Richelieu, French soldier and statesman, was moved to declare: "There are six great powers in Europe: England, France, Russia, Austria, Prussia and the Baring brothers." In the heyday of empire, the Barings financed every major commodity from Malayan rubber to Australian wool, together with the ships that bore the produce of the colonies and dominions to Britain.'

Notes

British Declaration of War 1914
Baring's Bank
Hofschroer: Bismarck Memorial Medal