ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the risk perception and risk management of European bankers with reference to their investments in Greece in the nineteenth century. The focus is on change and continuity in dealing with the risks of this new market on the European periphery. The aim of the research is to analyse the development of the Greek financial market for European capital during the nineteenth century. The banks’ participation in a number of other cases, such as the re-admittance of Greece to the European exchanges in 1878 or the issue of the 1910 loan for Eleftherios Venizelos, was also due to political pressure, exercised through both formal and informal channels. The market was said to have the potential to quickly catch up with West-European industrialisation. National differences in the style of risk perception are most striking in terms of the way in which the governments attempted to influence the banks and how the bankers reacted to such intervention.
