Banking and Industrialisation in Europe 1730-1914 [antikvár]

Banking and Industrialisation in Europe 1730-1914Banking and industrialisation: the link seems unbreakable. The whole rise of the banks in the nineteenth century runs parallel to the rise of industry; it is impossible to consider the one without the other. Yet this obvious truth, as it seems today, was for many years far from obvious to a previous age.It may help us to keep things in their proper perspective if we deal with this topic under three main headings. For the sake of clarity, we will take them one by one.The first has essentially to do with quantities. In all three sectors of credit the short term, the middle and long term, and the formation of fixed capital the demand for capital rose continually. We can determine the demand for short-term credit from the amount of discount handled by the central banks. But the demand for medium- and long-term credit the latter a relatively recent development is much harder to evaluate; and the investment in fixed assets in this period is virtually unknowable, even approximately, in quantitative terms. We may say, however, that the demand for capital necessarily tallied in every respect with the growth of the economy in general. We hardly need to insist on this point. However, we should perhaps insist on the fact that the structure of that demand was subject to evolution. At the start of our period, the demand was low and relatively dispersed. At the close, it was considerable and (up to a point) concentrated in large production units. This concentration in the demand was met by a gradual concentration in the supply, with the emergence of the large financial institutions.The second aspect of the question is no less important, but has perhaps not received all the attention it deserves, despite the relative abundance of the sources. I am referring