A financial history of western Europe

Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

Part One Money
Introduction to Part One
Chapter 2. The Evolution of Money in Western Europe
Chapter 3. Bank Money
Chapter 4. Bimetallism and the Emergence of the Gold Standard
Part Two Banking

Introduction to Part Two
Chapter 5. English and Scottish Banking
Chapter 6. French Banking
Chapter 7. German Banking
Chapter 8. Italian and Spanish Banking

Part Three Finance
Introduction to Part Three
Chapter 9. Government Finance
Chapter 10. Private Finance, Individuals and Families
Chapter 11. Private Finance—The Corporation
Chapter 12. Foreign Investment—Dutch, British, French and German Experience to 1914
Chapter 13. Transfer Cases
Chapter 14. Foreign Lending—Political and Analytical Aspects
Chapter 15. Financial Crises

Part Four The Interwar Period
Introduction to Part Four
Chapter 16. War Finance, Reparations, War Debts
Chapter 17. German Postwar Inflation
Chapter 18. The Restoration of the Pound to Par
Chapter 19. Stabilization of the Franc
Chapter 20. The 1929 Depression
Chapter 21. The 1930s

Part Five Afrer World War II
Introduction to Part Five
Chapter 22. German Finance In and After World War II
Chapter 23. Lend-Lease, the British Loan, the Marshall Plan
Chapter 24. European Financial Integration
Glossary

This is the first history of finance - broadly defined to include money, banking, capital markets, public and private finance, international transfers etc. - that covers Western Europe (with an occasional glance at the western hemisphere) and half a millennium.

Charles Kindleberger highlights the development of financial institutions to meet emerging needs, and the similarities and contrasts in the handling of financial problems such as transferring resources from one country to another, stimulating investment, or financing war and cleaning up the resulting monetary mess. The first half of the book covers money, banking and finance from 1450 to 1913; the second deals in considerably finer detail with the twentieth century.

This major work casts current issues in historical perspective and throws light on the fascinating, and far from orderly, evolution of financial institutions and the management of financial problems. Comprehensive, critical and cosmopolitan, this book is both an outstanding work of reference and essential reading for all those involved in the study and practice of finance, be they economic historians, financial experts, scholarly bankers or students of money and banking.

This groundbreaking work was first published in 1984.

https://www.routledge.com/A-Financial-History-of-Western-Europe/Kindleberger/p/book/9780415436533