ABSTRACT
This chapter quantifies the scale of long–term developments in the monetary sector during the ninety years or so to the outbreak of the First World War. The figures to be presented highlight both secular growth and structural change. Naturally they reflect changes in the environment pertaining specifically to banks, but more fundamentally they also capture the impact of long–term trends within the broader economy. Legislation was of some significance, but it was essentially the continuation of economic growth – with the long–term rise in population and per capita income – that led to fundamental changes in the kinds of money people wished to hold and use, and in the uses to which they were prepared to put different financial institutions.
