How Politics Shaped Modern Banking in Early Modern England: Rethinking the Nature of Representative Democracy, Public Debt, and Modern Banking (original) (raw)
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Throughout history, banking has been key to the development of fundamental institutions and structures of capitalism, while also having been instrumental in its recurrent crises. However, this significance isn't reflected in its definitions. In this brief note, I present a critical definition of banking institutions that takes into account their importance, and approaches banking from a variety of perspectives. It conceives the bank as a mercantile-rentier that overlays social inefficiencies in monetary allocation through the transmission of internallyproduced fungible rights in personam. This definition is an early synthesized result of ongoing research.
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Contents 3 List of Tables 8 List of Figures Note on referencing Acknowledgements CHAPTER 1: Introduction and research objectives 1.1 Stability and uncertainty, continuity and change 1.2 Formulation and scope of overall research objectives 1.3 Standpoint and methodological approach 1.4 Spatial organization: the centre-periphery model 1.5 Permeable boundaries 1.6 Institutional scope 1.7 Periodization 1.8 Overall plan of the work CHAPTER 2: Banking in Cornwall: sources, contexts and perspectives 2.1 Works relating to banking in Cornwall 2.1.1 Banks and banking personalities in Cornwall 2.1.2 Armstrong's pioneering study 2.1.3 Episodes in Cornish banking history 2.1.4 Archival sources 2.2 Country banking: the wider context 2.2.1 Origins and development of country banking 2.2.2 The London agency system: integrating the regional approach 2.2.3 The relationships of banking and industry 2.2.4 The Bank of England in relation to Cornwall 4 2.2.5 Organizational and structural themes 2.3 Summary of chapter 2 CHAPTER 3: The social bases of commercial action 3.1 The rise of middle-class values 3.2 Exercise of a `higher' initiative 3.3 The political dimension 3.4 The social construction of information: newspapers in society 3.5 Summary of chapter 3 CHAPTER 4: Theoretical perspectives 4.1 The nineteenth-century socioeconomic viewpoint 4.2 From familial relations to business organization 4.3 Will, authority, and organization 4.4 Individual determinism and fields of action 4.5 Organization typology and morphology 4.6 Networking and the social embeddedness of economic action 4.7 The pragmatic nature of decision-making processes 4.8 Negotiation and the resolution of conflict: game theory 4.9 Choice fields and trajectories 4.10 Path creation and dependency 4.11 The family firm in Cornish banking 4.12 Provenance and application of theory in this study CHAPTER 5: Financial intermediation in the Cornish landscape 5.1 The layered landscape 5.1.1 Salient topographical features 5.1.2 Subjective impressions of topography and the socioeconomic landscape before 1820 5.1.3 Perspectives in the transactional landscape 5.1.4 Attitudes to bankruptcy, business failure and fraud 5.2 Dominance of dynastic family groupings 101 5.3 Commercial power and control in the Cornish economy 108 5 5.4 The origins and development of banking: the wider context 5.4.1 Banking from above: the foundation of the Bank of England 5.4.2 Banking from below: local institutions from local needs 5.4.3 Entries into banking 5.4.4 Transactional functions in early banking 5.4.4.1 Transacting bills of exchange 5.4.4.2 Token and note issues 5.4.4.3 Deposits and social responsibility 5.4.5 A challenging environment 5.5 Introduction to the detailed historical narrative CHAPTER 6: The laissez-faire age of the private partnership, 1771-1844 6.1 Individual pioneers: a multiplicity of small banks 6.1.1 Some entries and exits 6.2 Mining investment and the beginning of the Miners' Bank
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How modern banking originated: The London goldsmith-bankers' institutionalisation of trust
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 00076791 2011 578132, 2011
ABSTRACT London goldsmith-bankers' development of paper credit-money in the seventeenth century ushered in the era of modern banking. This essay argues that this innovation of paper credit-money by goldsmith-bankers was the institutionalisation of the double-ownership scheme known as trust. This trust scheme was at the centre of the custom or morality that underlay the political struggle between the Crown, landowners, and the bourgeoisie in early modern England, the struggle from which goldsmith-banking and, later, joint-stock banking developed. This double ownership remains a central feature of the present banking system. Also during the financial boom of the late twentieth century, which ended in the present world financial crisis, the trust scheme was used extensively by many financial firms, such as mutual funds, pension funds, and asset-securitisation trusts.