Product Description

Revised and updated throughout, this brilliant survey of European financial history from the earliest times to the present by internationally renowned scholar and author Charles P. Kindleberger offers a comprehensive account of the evolution of money in Western Europe, bimetallism and the emergence of the gold standard, the banking systems of the Continent and the British Isles, and overviews of foreign investment, regional and global financial integration, and private and public finance in Western Europe. The new edition features expanded coverage of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and important new material on recent developments in European monetary integration.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #564824 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Economic History Review
`will end up on many undergraduate reading lists, whilst its extensive bibliography will prove a boon to [those] working their way into the field'

Review
On the first edition:"an astonishing achievement ... a vast range of topics ... written with clarity, subtlety, and derived from sources in French, English, and German ... a book anyone even pretending to a knowledge of monetary history must have" Journal of Economic History

will end up on many undergraduate reading lists, whilst its extensive bibliography will prove a boon to [those] working their way into the field (Economic History Review )

splendid book (World Economy )

World Economy
`splendid book'

Customer Reviews

An essential reference guide
Kindleberger's work on financial history is designed as an undergraduate guide, but such is the wealth of detail and information that it serves as a useful reference tome long after the undergraduate work is completed. Kindleberger takes the reader step by step through the financial issues of the European economy as it developed from feudal to capitalist society. The explanations of the gold versus silver standard debate (bi-metalism) is particularly helpful and clear, given the complexity of the issue. The charting of the relative developments of the UK and Continental financial systems, and the advantages that they gave the British in the nineteenth century, are also well written.

A reader looking for a wealth of data is likely to be disappointed. Figures are provided, but there are other books that will give reams of numbers for the economic historian (several of which are cited by Kindleberger - the references of this book alone are worth buying it for).

Overall, this is widely and rightly regarded as a valuable contribution to the field of economic history.