num_pages: 288
description: This work establishes the existence of a sophisticated and smoothly functioning system of financial markets in the mercantile states of northwestern Europe throughout the 1700s. Based on computer analysis of thousands of price quotes from the financial press of the eighteenth century, the results should force both historians and economists to reevaluate their understanding of the evolution of financial markets and their importance for the economic developments of that era. For example, the author finds that the financial crises of the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles actually aided, rather than retarded the development of the international capital markets. Indeed, the later financial panics of the eighteenth century, when compared to international crises of the nineteenth century, showed closer financial integration in the earlier century. These early capital markets facilitated capital flight from the French Revolution as it spread through the Continent and helped direct foreign capital into finance of the British Industrial Revolution.
language: English
title: The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason
titlecomplete: The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason (Studies in Monetary and Financial History)
genres: Economics, History, Finance
ratings_count: 9
series: Studies in Macroeconomic History
publisher: Cambridge University Press