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Auguste Dreyfus (28 June 1827 – 25 May 1897) was a French businessman who made his fortune by financing the Peruvian trade in guano. Dreyfus joined a small textile trading firm set up by three of his elder brothers and moved to Lima, Peru to act as their local representative. He became involved in the guano trade, and in 1869 signed a major contract with the Peruvian government that gave him a monopoly over exports of Peruvian guano to Europe. With this he controlled the largest source of Peruvian national income. The Peruvian government let Dreyfus act as their agent in managing their existing debt and floating new loans used for railway construction. The government ran into increasing financial difficulties. These were compounded by a war with Chile between 1879 and 1883 in which they lost their key guano-producing province. A lengthy series of lawsuits followed between the creditors whose loans were secured by guano deposits and the governments of Peru and Chile. The Dreyfus trading enterprise came to an end. He retired to France, where he owned a chateau in the country and a mansion in Paris that he filled with a major collection of art. ==Early years== Auguste Dreyfus was born into a Jewish family in Wissembourg, Bas-Rhin, on 28 June 1827. He was the tenth of twelve children of the merchant Edward Dreyfus (1788–1866) and his wife Sara Marx (1791–1865). He was the youngest of their seven boys. On 29 August 1852 Auguste's brothers Prospere, Jérome and Isidore started Dreyfus Frères & Cie. This was a small company in Paris trading in fabrics and other commodities. Auguste Dreyfus joined the company in 1856. By 1859 Auguste Dreyfus, now residing in Peru, had become a minority partner. Auguste began trading in guano, and quickly became wealthy through careful attention to the fluctuations in the global demand for the commodity. Prospere and Jérôme retired from the business in 1864 and Isidore in 1866. Leon Dreyfus, who had moved to Peru and made influential connections, became a partner on 19 January 1866 and remained associated with Auguste until 1869. Auguste became respected in business circles on both sides of the Atlantic for his skill and the profitability of his enterprises. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Auguste Dreyfus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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