Banking as we know it today was hardly in existence before the 17th century. However, there was something of a financial revolution in late medieval Italy and it saw a new type of firm offer financial services, and indeed banking services, taking deposits and lending money, even across national borders. These firms were principally interested…
In the history of Germany, few men are as significant as Otto von Bismarck, who unified the country in the mid-19th century. It is perhaps not because of Bismarck that Germany unified, but Bismarck more than anyone else elected the manner in which it would be done. Through the entire saga, he had a financier…
The value banks add to industry is well known, the value of banking to commerce is no less uncertain. By contrast, it can be easier to lose sight of the value banks provide to ordinary people, especially in a historical setting. Indeed, for the first couple centuries of modern banking, common folk hardly interacted with…
At the start of the 18th century, a stock market boom was underway in several European countries simultaneously. Today, this episode is best remembered for the spectacular boom and bust of the South Sea Company in Britain. However, it was just one of the companies involved in a larger mania. In France, a bubble in…
Despite the confrontation between the West and East during the Cold War, there was plenty of peaceful economic interaction between the two sides. During the roughly 75-year existence of the Soviet Union, it interacted across numerous different fronts with the capitalist world. One of the most notable of these channels was trade. Many banks financed…
Just a few months after the American War of Independence finally came to a formal conclusion with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, a bank was founded that would live to today. The Bank of New York had humble origins, founded with under $500,000 in equity capital. However, it had an illustrious backer and a…
The history of banking is full of triumphs and tragedies alike. Individual firms and entire business models have risen to dizzying heights before crashing down in disrepute. In each disaster is a lesson more lasting than the success or failure of any individual firm or financier. Although perhaps not the most studied financial market, and…
When it came to most arts and sciences, the state of Medieval European civilization left a lot to be desired. However, behind the shroud of brutishness and simplicity, it was a society steadily developing financial complexity. It was a unique development as well. The continent’s organization into numerous small states, in contrast to the Caliphates…
In the 16th century, European finance was dominated by a banking family whose wealth was far greater than their amusing name would let on. From their adopted home of Augsburg in Bavaria, they were creditors to emperors. These were not just any emperors too, but the Habsburgs, a dynasty that ruled much of Central Europe,…
Securitizations are often regarded as innovations of modern finance, products of the last three decades and not the last three centuries. In fact, pooling financial assets together and selling tradable instruments backed by that pool is not so novel a practice as one might think. Over two centuries ago, bankers were pooling life annuities, contracts…
The goldsmiths of 17th century London are among those who can be said to have invented modern banking. Though goldsmiths by trade, they played the part of bankers too, taking in deposits and loaning them out at interest to the public. Nonetheless, banks remained rare in Britain before 1750. That was soon to change however,…
When it comes to financing real estate purchases, mortgages have been around for centuries. The first loans called mortgages developed in the middle ages; the word itself comes from Norman law books as “mort gage” or “dead pledge.” The word dead here refers not to any human death but to the fact that medieval mortgages…
