This book brings together for the first time more than half a dozen proposals for an imperial paper currency in the mid-eighteenth century British Atlantic, to show how manage colonial currency and banking in the expanding empire.  Existing studies have looked at the successes and failures of schemes in individual colonies.  But some had grander ambitions, such as Benjamin Franklin, and offered proposals for ‘imperial’ or ‘continental’ paper currencies and monetary unions which would help knit together colonial territories throughout North...

This book reassesses the actual effects of the Bubble Act, still popularly associated with the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. The book builds on the foundational work of Ron Harris to discuss the act’s effect on corporate governance, literary culture, colonial law, and the Industrial Revolution. The Bubble Act was deemed an empty letter within England itself as it was rarely used in legal proceedings. Several chapters consider whether this was the case outside England, from Scotland to the Americas, India, and Africa. Others assess the impact of the act, both on literary culture and...

This book provides a comprehensive account of how the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 was financed. Where existing research has focused predominantly on the political and diplomatic significance of the Purchase, this book demonstrates the importance of the Purchase to global financial history.

The book provides context and background for the Louisiana Purchase and examines the role of key actors and companies, focusing particularly on the ‘forgotten financiers’ of the Purchase – individuals from the US, France and the UK including Alexander Baring, Albert Gallatin, Pierre Cesar...

This book is the first comprehensive history of the British Trade Corporation, which was constituted under a Royal Charter on 21st April 1917. Its charter was meant to last for sixty years, but in 1926, after a turbulent existence of only nine years, it was amalgamated with the Anglo-Austrian Bank, and absorbed into the Anglo-International Bank. 

The corporation together with its two main subsidiaries, the Levant Company and the National Bank of Turkey, conducted business not only in Britain but in Russia, Turkey, the Middle East and in Continental Europe. Although...

This edited collection discusses the evolution of microfinance and social business from the late medieval period to the modern era. The book fills a gap in financial history by exploring lesser-known, informal forms of credit granted to the poorest people, which have often not been recorded in writing.

The book highlights the particularly innovative forms of credit developed in Italy, but also includes global contributions on the presence of microfinance and social business across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This book illuminates for different countries and periods forms of...

This open access book examines the formation and sustainability of private credit networks in past societies, gathering a global range of case studies from Europe and the Americas. The book represents a fi rst attempt to coordinate the work of different scholars working on credit networks and aims to explore the possibilities offered by social network analysis for the study of past fi nancial markets and networks.

Each contribution offers new perspectives for the comprehension of past fi nancial networks, with a broad chronological and geographical scope. The chapters are arranged...