A History of European Banking

A history of European Banking

This work by Professor Raymond Bogaert, Herman Van der Wee and Ginette Kurgan-Van Hentenryk focusses on banking in the West and commends itself both for the arrative qualites of the text and for the authors’ decision to take a long-term sew in order to recount and explain each step in the development of the institutins concerned. At first sight this might seem a very ambitious project, as there is no apparent link between the professions practiced by, for example, the moneychangers of the ancient world, the cashiers of medieval fairs, the merchant bankers of the acceptance houses of the eighteenth century. But by basing themselves on a detailed analysis of commercial paper, that is to say promises to pay, foreign exchange contracts and bills of all types with which the merchants progressively replaced money in paymets between markets, on the procedures used in negotiation and discounting, and by following their geographical spread across Europe the authors have introduced a progressive logic into the work wich makes it unique.