Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (born Benjamin D'Israeli; 21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881), was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British prime minister to have been born into a Jewish family.
Disraeli was born in Bloomsbury, at that time a part of Middlesex. His father left Judaism after a dispute at his synagogue; Benjamin became an Anglican at the age of 11. After several unsuccessful attempts, Disraeli entered the House of Commons in 1837. In 1846, Prime Minister Robert Peel split the party over his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, which involved ending the tariff on imported grain. Disraeli clashed with Peel in the House of Commons, becoming a major figure in the party. When Lord Derby, the party leader, thrice formed governments in the 1850s and 1860s, Disraeli served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.
Upon Derby's retirement in 1868, Disraeli became prime minister briefly before losing that year's general election. He returned to the opposition before leading the party to a majority in the 1874 general election. He maintained a close friendship with Queen Victoria who, in 1876, elevated him to the peerage as Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraeli's second term was dominated by the Eastern question—the slow decay of the Ottoman Empire and the desire of other European powers, such as Russia, to gain at its expense. Disraeli arranged for the British to purchase a major interest in the Suez Canal Company in Egypt. In 1878, faced with Russian victories against the Ottomans, he worked at the Congress of Berlin to obtain peace in the Balkans at terms favourable to Britain and unfavourable to Russia, its longstanding enemy. This diplomatic victory established Disraeli as one of Europe's leading statesmen.
World events thereafter moved against the Conservatives. Controversial wars in Afghanistan and South Africa undermined his public support. He angered farmers by refusing to reinstitute the Corn Laws in response to poor harvests and cheap imported grain. With Gladstone conducting a massive speaking campaign, the Liberals defeated Disraeli's Conservatives at the 1880 general election. In his final months, Disraeli led the Conservatives in opposition. Disraeli wrote novels throughout his career, beginning in 1826, and published his last completed novel, Endymion, shortly before he died at the age of 76.
Benjamin D'Israeli was born on 21 December 1804 at 6 King's Road, Bedford Row, Bloomsbury, London, the second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria (Miriam), née Basevi. The family was of Sephardic Jewish mercantile background, with some Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors. He later romanticised his origins, claiming his father's family was of grand Spanish and Venetian descent; in fact, Isaac's family was of no great distinction, but on Disraeli's mother's side, in which he took no interest, there were some distinguished forebears, including Isaac Cardoso, as well as members of the Goldsmids, the Mocattas and the Montefiores. Historians differ on Disraeli's motives for rewriting his family history: Bernard Glassman argues that it was intended to give him status comparable to that of England's ruling elite; Sarah Bradford believes "his dislike of the commonplace would not allow him to accept the facts of his birth as being as middle-class and undramatic as they really were".
Disraeli's siblings were Sarah, Naphtali (born and died 1807), Ralph and James ("Jem"). He was close to his sister and on affectionate but more distant terms with his surviving brothers. Details of his schooling are sketchy. From the age of about six he was a day boy at a dame school in Islington, which one of his biographers described as "for those days a very high-class establishment". Two years later or so—the exact date has not been ascertained—he was sent as a boarder to Rev John Potticary's school at Blackheath (now St Piran's, Maidenhead, Berkshire).
Following a quarrel in 1813 with the Bevis Marks Synagogue, his father renounced Judaism and had the four children baptised into the Church of England. Isaac D'Israeli had never taken religion very seriously but had remained a observant member of the synagogue. Isaac's father, Benjamin, was a prominent and devout member; it was probably out of respect for him that Isaac did not leave when he fell out with the synagogue authorities in 1813. Isaac's friend Sharon Turner, a solicitor, convinced him that although he could comfortably remain unattached to any formal religion it would be disadvantageous to the children if they did so. Turner stood as godfather when Benjamin was baptised, aged twelve, on 31 July 1817.
Conversion enabled Disraeli to contemplate a career in politics. There had been members of parliament (MPs) from Jewish families since Sampson Gideon in 1770. However, until the Jews Relief Act 1858, MPs were required to take the oath of allegiance "on the true faith of a Christian", necessitating at least nominal conversion. It is not known whether Disraeli formed any ambition for a parliamentary career at the time of his baptism, but there is no doubt that he bitterly regretted his parents' decision not to send him to Winchester College, one of the great public schools which consistently provided recruits to the political elite. His two younger brothers were sent there, and it is not clear why Isaac chose to send his eldest son to a much less prestigious school. The boy evidently held his mother responsible for the decision; Bradford speculates that "Benjamin's delicate health and his obviously Jewish appearance may have had something to do with it." The school chosen for him was run by Eliezer Cogan at Higham Hill in Walthamstow. He began there in the autumn term of 1817/
In November 1821, shortly before his seventeenth birthday, Disraeli was articled as a clerk to a firm of solicitors—Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse and Hunt—in the City of London. T. F. Maples was not only the young Disraeli's employer and a friend of his father, but also his prospective father-in-law: Isaac and Maples considered that the latter's only daughter might be a suitable match for Benjamin. A friendship developed, but there was no romance. The firm had a large and profitable business, and as the biographer R. W. Davis observes, the clerkship was "the kind of secure, respectable position that many fathers dream of for their children". Although biographers including Robert Blake and Bradford comment that such a post was incompatible with Disraeli's romantic and ambitious nature, he reportedly gave his employers satisfactory service, and later professed to have learned much there. He recalled: I had some scruples, for even then I dreamed of Parliament. My father's refrain always was 'Philip Carteret Webb', who was the most eminent solicitor of his boyhood and who was an MP. It would be a mistake to suppose that the two years and more that I was in the office of our friend were wasted. I have often thought, though I have often regretted the University, that it was much the reverse.
The year after joining Maples' firm, Benjamin changed his surname from D'Israeli to Disraeli. His reasons are unknown, but the biographer Bernard Glassman surmises that it was to avoid being confused with his father. Disraeli's sister and brothers adopted the new version of the name; Isaac and his wife retained the older form.
Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father in the summer of 1824. He later wrote that while travelling on the Rhine he decided to abandon his position: "I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer." On their return to England he left the solicitors, at the suggestion of Maples, with the aim of qualifying as a barrister. He enrolled as a student at Lincoln's Inn and joined the chambers of his uncle, Nathaniel Basevy, and then those of Benjamin Austen, who persuaded Isaac that Disraeli would never make a barrister and should be allowed to pursue a literary career. He had made a tentative start: in May 1824 he submitted a manuscript to his father's friend, the publisher John Murray, but withdrew it before Murray could decide whether to publish it.