ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Europe and subsequently on the United States as “the breeding ground” of modern world financial history, with references to cultural and commercial exchanges between former Ottoman, Asian, and Western nations and empires. Despite the sophistication of new quantitative methods and instruments, and the transformational impact of technology, financial decision makers and institutions are defined by what Niall Ferguson called the “cash nexus,” the forces at work in the interstices of power and money. Although the public, press, media, graduate and business school programs are fascinated by finance, financial instruments, operations and crisis, financial history and the culture of finance are too often relegated to an introductory chapter in a finance textbook or an elective course deemed “soft science.” There are excellent new studies in economic and business history, but few works specifically devoted to the cultural dimension of contemporary finance, banking and investment: the interplay between history, economics and culture.
