Hacker News Reader

Comment by Arainach | Hacker News Reader

>was also where most modern billionaires made their fortune

Could you explain this claim?

The Baku oil fields were capitalized by the Rothschild banking dynasty, which was already immensely wealthy before the oil age. Perhaps others will weigh in, but as I recall this was in response to the fabulous wealth Rockefeller was realizing in the United States. Petroleum had always been present around Baku and elsewhere, but it hadn't been exploited on the same industrial scale. It was sometimes regarded as an inconvenience which devalued land.

Exactly so. A really good, very readable book on this and oil in general is Daniel Yergin's The Prize.

yes agree that is an enjoyable and informative read..

Sure - I don't doubt that Baku made some people fabulously rich, I'm more curious about "most modern billionaires", specifically "most". I'm not even convinced that most modern billionaires made their billions through petroleum, much less Baku.

Not sure what that poster meant by that.

In this case, the Rothschilds were already a powerful European banking dynasty. There are many shadowy speculations about the different branches of this family. Perhaps this is where the confusion originates.

The Nobel family did better relative to their previous station. In the end the Baku concerns were sold to Rockefeller before being nationalized after the Russian Revolution.

i think you're making the common meaning mistake between modern and current times when in a history discussion context.

thats and the Nobels are the more public ones. there's also billionaires from the astrian dynasties all over baku.

also stalin journalism career took off there.

Nobel (the Nobel prize guy) made his fortune in Baku, IMSMR

I thought he made his fortune from TNT and then founded the Nobel prize out of guilt?

I believe that's where he invented it

Nobel didn’t invent TNT. That was invented by Wilbrand. Nobel invented dynamite. Both were invented in Germany.

He (Alfred) was well-known for explosives but most of his money came from his shares in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branobel, run by his brothers.

I suspect the intended context is most Russian billionaires.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com