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Distributed for Reaktion Books

Global Financial System 1750-2000

This book traces the evolution of the highly integrated global financial system from 1750 to the present. It examines the corporate form of business organization in the 18th century that saw an explosion of growth in the 19th, which facilitated the international movement of capital. The author also deals with the parallel growth of financial markets and explains how the need to finance public debts paved the way for stock markets as well as outlining the role of private merchant bankers, who originated as international bankers with family-run offices across Europe. He charts the development of banks into public corporations and follows the evolution of modern paper money, explaining the emergence of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. While tracing the development of foreign-exchange markets and the history of trading blocs, the book also examines how economic powers such as Britain and France used access to capital to wield power in less-developed parts of the world. Finally, a history of financial crises is presented, revealing how economic shocks reverberate from one country to another today through the global financial network.

Distribution by the University of Chicago Press only to customers in the USA and Canada. Customers elsewhere should visit the UK website of Reaktion Books.


256 pages | 5.5 x 9.25 | © 2001

Globalities

Economics and Business: Economics--Development, Growth, Planning, Economics--History


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Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
1. The Coming of the Corporation
2. The Making of Financial Markets
3. Gold and Silver: Aristocrats of Monetary Standards
4. The Triumph of Paper Money
5. The Passage from Free Banking to Central Banking
6. The Birth of World Currencies
7. The Road to Flexible Exchange Rates
8. The Evolution of International Banking
9. The Paths of Foreign Investment
10. The Struggle for Free trade
11. The Vicissitudes of Capitalism
12. The Age of Financial Integration Begins
13. In the Shadow of the Global Financial System
References
Bibliography
Index

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