Books in the Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance series

Much scholarship on the British transatlantic slave trade has focused on its peak period in the late eighteenth century and its abolition in the early nineteenth; Nonetheless, his astonishing rise and fall marked a turning point in the development of the brutal transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.

This book uncovers the extent to which government policy in mid nineteenth-century Brazil followed the interests of the all-powerful coffee growing class.

This work demonstrates that, across time, conflicting views on poverty and liberal economic theory have, to varying degrees, influenced how the government has protected the working poor, and will be of interest to financial and economic historians.

This book deals with risk management and the organisation of banking in Swedish savings banks alongside the development in other European countries. The analysis deals with the overall development of the Swedish banking system and the role of savings banks as well as bank connections with different groups of customers.

This book explores the origins and development of the asset management profession in Britain as a distinct activity within financial services, independent of banks and stockbrokers.

Focal topics such as the history of European elites and the history of European financial markets will have an interdisciplinary appeal for scholars and researchers.

This book explores the Swedish experience of banking development, regulation and financial crisis from 1900 to 2015. The book also analyses how shifts in bank regulations are usually part of more general policy shifts in society, which are in turn connected to both pragmatic and ideological considerations.

Academics and students of modern economic change and historicfinancial revolutions alike will see that the years from 1353 to1532 encompassed immense upheaval and change, reminiscent of modern recessions.

Yet, mutual and micro-insurance is becoming increasingly important, both in the Western and in the non-Western world and bears re-examination. This book traces the track record of mutual insurance from 1550 to the present, examining provisions for burial, sickness, unemployment, old age, and widowhood.

Wadan Narsey explores how Great Britain sustained financial supremacy in the international economy in the latter part of the nineteenth century, while also maintaining its commitment to keeping the pound sterling fully convertible to a fixed amount of gold.

Understanding the American stock market boom and bust of the 1920s is vital for formulating policies to combat the potentially deleterious effects of busts on the economy. Using new data, Kabiri explains what led to the 1920s stock market boom and 1929 crash and looks at whether 1929 was a bubble or not and whether it could have been anticipated.

At the start of the eighteenth century Louis XIV needed to remit huge sums of money abroad to support his armies during the War of the Spanish Succession. This book explains how international bankers moved French money across Europe, and how the foreign exchange system was so overloaded by the demands of war that a massive banking crash resulted.

This book offers a wholesale reinterpretation of both the introduction of excise taxation in Great Britain in the 1640s and the genesis of the Financial Revolution of the 1690s. A fresh reading of William Petty's Treatise on Taxes illustrates the development of an indigenous discourse in defence of the tax state.

This book charts the course of monetary policy in the UK from 1967 to 1982. It shows how events such as the 1967 devaluation, the collapse of Bretton Woods, the stagflation of the 1970s, and the IMF loan of 1976 all shaped policy. It shows that the 'monetarist' experiment of the 1980s was based on a fundamental misreading of 1970s monetary policy.

To highlight both the achievements of the public banks of Naples and their lessons for financial resiliency, the book focuses on financial crises and how they were overcome in Naples in contrast to other European financial systems. The first section focuses on the development of the public banks unique to Naples.

This volume investigates the use of mortgages in the European countryside between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. A mortgage allowed a loan to be secured with land or other property, and the practice has been linked to the transformation of the agrarian economy that paved the way for modern economic growth. Historians have viewed the mortgage both positively and negatively: on the one hand, it provided borrowers with opportunities for investment in agriculture; but equally, it exposed them to the risk of losing their mortgaged property. The case studies presented in this volume reveal the variety of forms that the mortgage took, and show how an intricate balance was struck between the interests of the borrower looking for funds, and those of the lender looking for security. It is argued that the character of mortgage law, and the nature of rights in land in operation in any given the place and period, determined the degree to which mortgages were employed. Over time, developments in these factors allowed increasing numbers of peasants to use mortgages more freely, and with a decreasing risk of expropriation. This volume will be appealing to academics and researchers interested in financial history, rural credit and debt, and the economic history of agrarian communities.

This book explores the evolution of credit and financing in Europe from the Middle Ages through to Modern Times.

This book provides a historical understanding of current debates over tax reform and offers a comparative framework for discussing the relationship between fiscal policy and the distribution of income and wealth. the impact of globalization on tax and fiscal policy; and the political economy of tax and fiscal reform.

This book provides a thorough review of early English land taxes of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Nowadays remembered mostly through Adam Smith's references to the short-lived Ayr Bank in the Wealth of Nations, the 1772-3 financial crisis was an important historical episode in its own right, taking place during a pivotal period in the development of financial capitalism and coinciding with the start of the traditional industrialisation narrative. It was also one of the earliest purely financial crises occurring in peacetime, and its progress showed an impressive geographical reach, involving England, Scotland, the Netherlands and the North American colonies. This book uses a variety of previously unpublished archival sources to question the bubble narrative usually associated with this crisis, and to identify the mechanisms of financial contagion that allowed the failure of a small private bank in London to cause rapid and severe distress throughout the 18th century financial system. It re-examines the short and turbulent career of the Ayr Bank, and concludes that its failure was the result of cavalier liability management akin to that of Northern Rock in 2007, rather than the poor asset quality alleged in existing literature. It furthermore argues that the Bank of England's prompt efforts to contain the crisis are evidence of a Lender of Last Resort in action, some thirty years before the classical formulation of the concept by Henry Thornton.

This book charts the contributions made to the development of the late medieval English economy by enterprise, money, and credit in a period which saw its major export trade in wool, which earned most of its money-supply, suffer from prolonged periods of warfare, high taxation, adverse weather, and mortality of sheep.

This book offers 14 contributions that examine key questions in bank decision-taking,constitution of confidence in banks and risk management practices from Early Modernity to the twentieth century.

The international financial crisis of 2007-08 and the ensuing scandals continue to raise important debates about the role of institutions in maintaining trust and fighting corruption, as well as in sustaining economic growth and political stability in a globalized world.

This world was increasingly challenged in the interwar period, being replaced by floating exchange rates, trade protectionism and restrictions on capital movements.This book fills a gap in the historiography of British banking by recovering the histories of long-forgotten merchant banks rather than focusing on the better-known firms.

Absent evidence to the contrary, it is usually assumed that US financial markets developed in spite of government attempts to regulate, and therefore laissez faire is the best approach for developing critically important and enduring market institutions.

Jacob Henry Schiff (1847-1920), a German-born American Jewish banker, facilitated critical loans for Japan in the early twentieth century. This book's analysis differs from the consensus that Schiff funded Japan largely out of enmity towards Russia but rather sought to work with Japan for over thirty years.

This book provides a thorough review of early English land taxes of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.