Download Free A History Of Credit And Power In The Western World Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online A History Of Credit And Power In The Western World and write the review.

The end of the Cold War put the planet on a new track, abruptly replacing the familiar world of bipolarity, red phones, and intercontinental ballistic missiles with the strange new world of the Internet, e-commerce, and Palm Pilots. The "New World Order" was defined by a U.S.-led war against Iraq, bloody ethnic strife in Bosnia and Rwanda, and religious turmoil in Central Asia. This evolving global system, however, overlooked the powerful role of credit, which functions as a critical building block for developing greater national and individual wealth. This volume examines the evolution of credit in the Western world and its relationship to power. Spanning several centuries of human endeavor. it focuses on Western Europe and the United States and also considers how the Western system became the global credit system. Six major themes run throughout: (1) the direct relationship between credit and power; (2) different kinds of political power promote different kinds of economic behavior; (3) various societal and cultural groups were often more successful in mingling credit and political power; (4) the Western credit system evolved in tandem with the development of the nation-state; (5) historically, there has been a pattern of financial crises; (6) credit spread from being the privilege of the wealthy and powerful to being available to vast numbers. MacDonald and Gastmann have broken history into five periods, ranging from early pre-modern, defining the earliest references to banking and credit as exemplified by the Code of Hammurabi, circa 1726 BC, through the Roman Empire with its creation of money and growing use of credit in trade, the barbarian invasions of the 11th century which led to a breakdown in credit networks in the West, through the establishment of the Italian city-states, to the modern period which incorporates the rise of credit in the Low Countries in the 1500s and extends through the rise of London and New York as the major international credit hubs.
This volume examines the evolution of credit in the western world and its relationship to power. Spanning several centuries of human endeavour, it focuses on western Europe and the United States and also considers how the western system became the global credit system.
Why stable banking systems are so rare Why are banking systems unstable in so many countries—but not in others? The United States has had twelve systemic banking crises since 1840, while Canada has had none. The banking systems of Mexico and Brazil have not only been crisis prone but have provided miniscule amounts of credit to business enterprises and households. Analyzing the political and banking history of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil through several centuries, Fragile by Design demonstrates that chronic banking crises and scarce credit are not accidents. Calomiris and Haber combine political history and economics to examine how coalitions of politicians, bankers, and other interest groups form, why they endure, and how they generate policies that determine who gets to be a banker, who has access to credit, and who pays for bank bailouts and rescues. Fragile by Design is a revealing exploration of the ways that politics inevitably intrudes into bank regulation.
International trade has shaped the modern world, yet until now no single book has been available for both economists and general readers that traces the history of the international economy from its earliest beginnings to the present day. Power and Plenty fills this gap, providing the first full account of world trade and development over the course of the last millennium. Ronald Findlay and Kevin O'Rourke examine the successive waves of globalization and "deglobalization" that have occurred during the past thousand years, looking closely at the technological and political causes behind these long-term trends. They show how the expansion and contraction of the world economy has been directly tied to the two-way interplay of trade and geopolitics, and how war and peace have been critical determinants of international trade over the very long run. The story they tell is sweeping in scope, one that links the emergence of the Western economies with economic and political developments throughout Eurasia centuries ago. Drawing extensively upon empirical evidence and informing their systematic analysis with insights from contemporary economic theory, Findlay and O'Rourke demonstrate the close interrelationships of trade and warfare, the mutual interdependence of the world's different regions, and the crucial role these factors have played in explaining modern economic growth. Power and Plenty is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the origins of today's international economy, the forces that continue to shape it, and the economic and political challenges confronting policymakers in the twenty-first century.
In this second edition of The Rise of Western Power, Jonathan Daly retains the broad sweep of his introduction to the history of Western civilization as well as introducing new material into every chapter, enhancing the book's global coverage and engaging with the latest historical debates. The West's history is one of extraordinary success: no other region, empire, culture, or civilization has left so powerful a mark upon the world. Daly charts the West's achievements-representative government, the free enterprise system, modern science, and the rule of law-as well as its misdeeds: two World Wars, the Holocaust, imperialistic domination, and the Atlantic slave trade. Taking us through a series of revolutions, he explores the contributions of other cultures and civilizations to the West's emergence, weaving in historical, geographical, and cultural factors. The new edition also contains more material on themes such as the environment and gender, and additional coverage of India, China and the Islamic world. Daly's engaging narrative is accompanied by timelines, maps and further reading suggestions, along with a companion website featuring study questions, over 100 primary sources and 60 historical maps to enable further study.
States of Credit provides the first comprehensive look at the joint development of representative assemblies and public borrowing in Europe during the medieval and early modern eras. In this pioneering book, David Stasavage argues that unique advances in political representation allowed certain European states to gain early and advantageous access to credit, but the emergence of an active form of political representation itself depended on two underlying factors: compact geography and a strong mercantile presence. Stasavage shows that active representative assemblies were more likely to be sustained in geographically small polities. These assemblies, dominated by mercantile groups that lent to governments, were in turn more likely to preserve access to credit. Given these conditions, smaller European city-states, such as Genoa and Cologne, had an advantage over larger territorial states, including France and Castile, because mercantile elites structured political institutions in order to effectively monitor public credit. While creditor oversight of public funds became an asset for city-states in need of finance, Stasavage suggests that the long-run implications were more ambiguous. City-states with the best access to credit often had the most closed and oligarchic systems of representation, hindering their ability to accept new economic innovations. This eventually transformed certain city-states from economic dynamos into rentier republics. Exploring the links between representation and debt in medieval and early modern Europe, States of Credit contributes to broad debates about state formation and Europe's economic rise.
The public is fascinated with financial crashes. Historians portray the roar of an angry mob toppling presidents or prime ministers and destroying the property of those who are regarded as malefactors. And certainly, financial crisis is often a factor in political change. It is often overlooked, but nonetheless significant that one of the major causes for the French Revolution was the poor state of finances, with the nation coming to bankruptcy. Large systemic financial crises create history. Various actors, big and small, become caught in the drama, contributing to it in their own special way. When Small Countries Crash seeks to capture some of the drama of financial collapses and their impact on small countries, which the authors define as populations under 10 million, generally 5-6 million. MacDonald and Novo have selected countries that have had a financial crisis in the national economy; that included key actors; and where access to reliable data is available. As the authors demonstrate, the story of small countries suffering the costs of financial missteps is long and painful. They argue that smaller economies tend to be more vulnerable to economic shocks, many of which are externally generated. Small economies confront particular challenges in terms of economies of scale, diversification, and depth of expertise and workforce. The chapters in this absorbing book focus on Iceland, Latvia, Ireland, the Caribbean, Scotland, Finland, and Albania. This in-depth study is unique in its close look at financial disasters in countries that have, until now, been overlooked.
What do Michael Milken and Martha Stewart have in common? (Answer: Both became public scapegoats for an outrageous era of greed and excess.) What was the most outrageous party thrown by a financial baron of the twentieth century? (Answer: Tough call, but either Michael Milken's Predators Ball in 1985, or Dennis Kozlowski's Sardinian birthday bash in 2001, with its vodka-spouting sculpture.) Which U.S. war hero president became party to, and victim of, an unabashed con man known as the Napoleon of Wall Street? (Answer: Ulysses S. Grant, but it's a long story.) These questions and more are discussed in Scott MacDonald and Jane Hughes' Separating Fools from Their Money. The authors trace the history of financial scandals from the early days of the young republic through the Enron/WorldCom debacle of modern times. A host of colorful characters inhabit the pages of this history, revealing human nature in all of its dubious shades of gray. At the same time, the book exposes themes common to all financial scandals, which remain astonishingly unchanged over more than two centuries--greed, hubris, media connections, self-interested politicians, and booms-gone-bust, to name a few. Informative and entertaining, Separating Fools should engage the interest of investors and casual business readers, as well as economists interested in supplemental reading for their students.
In this comprehensive analysis of social systems of taxation and budgeting, the authors provide detailed examples from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages in Europe, and modern times to show how governments through the ages have raised money and spent it. They examine the two essential activities of government--taxing and spending--against the background of the societies in which they were imbedded and the development of government's administrative capacities. They also argue that government mobilization of resources involves critical human concerns--waging war and providing for the welfare of the people. ISBN 0-671-54617-1: $24.95.
The end of the Cold War put the planet on a new track, abruptly replacing the familiar world of bipolarity, red phones, and intercontinental ballistic missiles with the strange new world of the Internet, e-commerce, and Palm Pilots. The "New World Order" was defined by the first U.S.-led war against Iraq, bloody ethnic strife in Bosnia and Rwanda, and religious turmoil in Central Asia. This evolving global system, however, overlooked the powerful role of credit, which functions as a critical building block for developing greater national and individual wealth. This volume examines the evolution of credit in the Western world and its relationship to power. Spanning several centuries of human endeavor, it focuses on Western Europe and the United States and also considers how the Western system became the global credit system. Now available in paperback, A History of Credit and Power in the Western World is a highly accessible, innovative and well-written volume that will engage historians and economists alike.