Começou a sua carreira profissional no escritório de um procurador, em
1821, a fim de se preparar para um lugar na administração pública, aí se mantendo até
1831. Entretanto, em
1826, inicia a sua carreira de escritor com a publicação de
Vivian Grey (1826).
O começo da sua carreira política dá-se em
1837, com a sua eleição para deputado por
Wycombe. Em
1848 torna-se líder do partido proteccionista. Nesse mesmo ano foi nomeado ministro do Tesouro e, constatando que a nação desejava uma política de livre-câmbio, abandonou a sua orientação proteccionista.
Entre
1852 e
1874 a sua carreira política caracteriza-se por demissões e regressos ao poder. É precisamente a partir de 1874 que a sua figura política se destaca pelas diversas reformas levadas a cabo (reformas internas sobre fábricas e habitações, emendou a lei dos pobres, etc.), principalmente no campo externo. Aderindo a uma política expansionista e imperialista, contribuiu para a grandeza e poderio do
império britânico. Apoderou-se do controle da Companhia do
Canal do Suez, anexou o
Transvaal na
África do Sul e o
Chipre. Em
1877, aclamou a
rainha Vitória imperatriz das Índias. Dois anos mais tarde entrava na
Câmara dos Lordes com o título de Lord Beaconsfield.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield,
KG,
PC,
FRS, (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a
British Prime Minister, parliamentarian,
Conservative statesman and literary figure. Starting from comparatively humble origins, he served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Although his father had him baptised to
Anglicanism at age 12, he was nonetheless Britain's first and thus far only Prime Minister who was born into a Jewish family—originally from
Italy.
He played an instrumental role in the creation of the modern
Conservative Party after the
Corn Laws schism of 1846.
Disraeli's biographers believe he was descended from Italian
Sephardic Jews. He claimed
Portuguese ancestry, possibly referring to an earlier origin of his family heritage in
Iberia prior to the
expulsion of Jews in 1492. After this event many Jews emigrated, in two waves; some fled to the Muslim lands of the
Ottoman Empire, but many also went to Christian Europe, first to northern Italy, then to the Netherlands, and later to England.
One modern historian has seen him as essentially a
marrano.
He was the second child and eldest son of
Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria Basevi. Benjamin changed the spelling in the 1820s by dropping the apostrophe.
His siblings included Sarah (1802–1859), Naphtali (1807), Ralph (1809–1898), and James (1813–1868).
Benjamin at first attended a small school, the Reverend
John Potticary's school at
Blackheath.
His father had Benjamin
baptised in July 1817 following a dispute with their
synagogue. The elder D'Israeli was content to remain outside organised religion. From 1817, Benjamin attended a school at
Higham Hill, in
Walthamstow, under
Eliezer Cogan.
His younger brothers, in contrast, attended the superior
Winchester College.
(...)
Disraeli turned towards literature after his financial disaster, motivated in part by a desperate need for money, and brought out his first novel,
Vivian Grey, in 1826. Disraeli's biographers agree that
Vivian Grey was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of
The Representative, and it proved very popular on its release, although it also caused much offence within the
Tory literary world when Disraeli's authorship was discovered. The book, initially anonymous, was purportedly written by a "man of fashion", perhaps Ross M. Brown – someone who moved in high society. Disraeli, then just twenty-three, did not move in high society, and the numerous
solecisms present in his otherwise brilliant and daring work made this painfully obvious. Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. Furthermore, John Murray believed that Disraeli had caricatured him and abused his confidence–an accusation denied at the time, and by the official biography, although subsequent biographers (notably Blake) have sided with Murray.
(...)
Disraeli was elevated to the House of Lords in 1876 when
Queen Victoria made him
Earl of Beaconsfield and
Viscount Hughenden.
In the
general election of 1880 Disraeli's Conservatives were defeated by Gladstone's Liberals, in large part owing to the uneven course of the
Second Anglo-Afghan War. The Irish Home Rule vote in England contributed to his party's defeat. Disraeli became ill soon after and died in April 1881.
He is buried in a vault beneath St Michael's Church in the grounds of his home
Hughenden Manor, accessed from the churchyard. Against the outside wall of the church is a memorial erected in his honour by Queen Victoria. His
literary executor, and for all intents and purposes his heir, was his private secretary,
Lord Rowton.
The Disraeli vault also contains the body of Sarah Brydges Willyams, the wife of James Brydges Willyams of
St Mawgan in Cornwall. Her wish to be buried there was granted after she left an estate sworn at under £40,000, of which Disraeli received over £30,000.
Disraeli has a memorial in
Westminster Abbey. He is also remembered with a large statue in the market town of
Ormskirk where he graces the centre of famous student town.
(...)
Although born of Jewish parents, Disraeli was baptised in the Christian faith at the age of twelve, and remained an observant
Anglican for the rest of his life.
Adam Kirsch, in his biography of Disraeli, states that his Jewishness was "both the greatest obstacle to his ambition and its greatest engine."
Much of the criticism of his policies was couched in
anti-Semitic terms. He was depicted in some antisemitic political cartoons with a big nose and curly black hair, called "
Shylock" and "abominable Jew," and portrayed in the act of
ritually murdering the infant Britannia.
In response to a political taunt made by
Daniel O'Connell in the British parliament, to which Disraeli replied with the statement, "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the Right Honourable Gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the
Temple of Solomon."
One apocryphal story states that Disraeli reconverted to Judaism on his deathbed.
