This book, the product of a unique international scholarly collaboration sponsored jointly by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Soviet Academy of Sciences, provides a comprehensive survey on international banking from 1870 to 1914. In that period international investment reached dimensions previously unknown, and the banking systems of the world achieved a degree of internationalization without precedent. The book's authors, twenty-five scholars from fifteen countries, are the acknowledged experts in their fields. They detail the origin and development of internationally oriented banks in each major country, and explain their role in foreign investment and industrial finance. They look at all areas of the world that were involved in international investment, either as investors, recipients of investment, or both. The definitive work on international banking from 1870 to 1914, this book will interest scholars and students in financial and banking history, bankers and economists in the finanical industry, and general historians.

Financial experts from various countries provide a comprehensive survey of the origins and growth of the modern international banking system in a critical period in the emergence of the modern world economy.

During the years before 1914 the worlde(tm)s still largely unused resources were brought increasingly within the framework of a single world economy. This process owed much to Britaine(tm)s ability to export capital on a scale which has never since been equalled. Yet periods of heavy investment overseas alternated with home investment booms that absorbed the greater part of Britaine(tm)s savings. The reasons for this fluctuation, and the mechanism which linked Britaine(tm)s economic development with the rest of the world, are still subject to debate. This volume illuminates the problems of the global economy today by examining different interpretations and research from history.

Banking on Global Markets uses the story of the U.S. business and political dealings of Germany's largest bank to illuminate important developments in the ongoing globalization of major financial institutions. Throughout its nearly 140-year-long history, Deutsche Bank served as one of Germany's principal vehicles for forging economic and other links with the rest of the world. Despite some early successes in the face of severe obstacles for Deutsche Bank, the U.S. market probably remained Deutsche Bank's highest foreign priority and its most frustrating challenge. As with many foreign investors, Deutsche Bank found its hopes of harnessing America's enticing opportunities often dashed by many regulatory and political barriers. Relying on primary-source material, Banking on Global Markets traces Deutsche Bank involvement with the United States in the context of a changing national and international regulatory and economic environment that set the stage for its strategies and activities in the United States, and, at times, even in its home country. It is the story of how international cooperation furthered and conflict hindered those endeavors, and how international banking evolved from a very personalized business between nations to one dominated by enormous transnational markets. It is a work designed for anyone interested in how cross-border flows of information and capital have affected history and how our modern form of globalization distinguishes itself from that of earlier periods. A professor of finance and writer of history, Christopher Kobrak weaves together how these financial, political, and institutional developments have helped shape the emerging new international order.