A Financial History of Western Europe | Part 1 — Money

This is the first of five sessions on Charles P. Kindleberger's 1993 (1984) book A Financial History of Western Europe.

From the Dust Jacket:

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 about 1450 to 1913; the second deals in considerably more detail with the twentieth century.

In his latest book, "Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System," Perry Mehrling says:

"In Charlie's mind, this book was to be his culminating treatise on international money, and, if we want to understand it, that is how we must attempt to read it."

There are two editions of this book, which are fairly similar. We will organize our discussion around the 1993 second edition, but it's fine to participate with the 1984 first edition.

This week, we discuss the introduction chapter as well as the three chapters in Part 1: Money.

• Chapter 2: The Evolution of Money in Western Europe
• Chapter 3: Bank Money
• Chapter 4: Bimetallism and the Emergence of the Gold Standard