Special Offering

Catalog description

This is a topics-oriented approach to the history of pre-industrial, industrializing and industrialized economies with a focus on on the United States and Western Europe. Particular emphasis is placed on the historical conditions that caused major changes in financial markets. Topics covered includes the roles of elites in the development of new mediums and mechanisms of exchange; the evolution of modern fiscal systems to finance territorial expansion, geopolitical strategies and subsequent military operations; the articulation of new financial networks in the wake of the world wars of the twentieth century; and the deployment of globalized systems of finance and trade at the conclusion of the Cold War and at the start of the new century. This course discusses who, what, where, when and how various financial instruments evolved, ranging from clay tablet receipts for grain in ancient Sumer to the deployment of government bonds in England during the Napoleonic Wars, and it includes the birth of statistics-based insurance markets in 18th century Scotland. We will place particular emphasis on assessing the historical conditions that caused these major additions to the portfolio of available financial instruments.