ABSTRACT
This book has argued, as the title indicates, that the Second Bank was a “central” bank in an era of nation-building. The title refers to the Second Bank as a “central” bank to convey the view that the Second Bank was not a central bank in the sense that is commonly understood today. The book stands apart from that strand of the economic history literature of the Bank that sees the Bank, more or less, as a central bank in the manner of the US Federal Reserve. It returns to a historically grounded interpretation of the Bank as a different kind of central banking institution, one that would meet the needs of a young, geographically expanding nationstate in the early nineteenth century while keeping its stockholders happy.
