For centuries private bankers owned and managed their banks, usually with unlimited liability.In the mid-19th century they faced increasing competition. This book traces the rise and decline of this original form of banking, and its revival in the late 20th century as a response to the development of a new market - the management of personal wealth

Introduction ; 1. . Instruments, institutions, centres and networks: developing the structural framework, c.1300-1700 ; 2. Public and private markets for capital and credit, 1688-1793 ; 3. War and economic transformation, 1793-185 ; 4. Golden age, 1815-1870 ; 5. The onset of the corporate economy, 1870-1914 ; 6. Indian summer, 1914-1931 ; 7. Decline and renaissance, 1931-c.2000 ; Conclusion

The first ever study of its kind on the history of private banking Long-term historical comparative perspective Written by leading scholars in the field A multi-disciplinary work, of interest to economists, historians and social scientists

Youssef Cassis is Professor of Economic History at the European University Institute, Florence. He was previously Professor of Economic History at the University of Geneva (2004-2010) and at the University Pierre Mendes France, Grenoble (1997-04).He has held visiting professorships at the Cass Business School, the Graduate Institute in Geneva and the University of St Gallen. His work mainly focuses on banking and financial history, as well as business history more generally. His numerous publications on the subject include, A History of International Financial Centres, 1780-2005, (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Crises and Opportunities, The Shaping of Modern Finance (Oxford University Press, 2011) among many others. He was the cofounder, in 1994, of Financial History Review (Cambridge University Press) and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the European Association for Banking and Financial History and past President (2005-07) of the European Business History Association Philip L. Cottrell was Professor of Financial History at the University of Leicester when he retired in 2010. He was a leading member of the European Association for Banking History, and in 1994 with Prof. Youssef Cassis, a founding editor of Financial History Review, published by Cambridge University Press on the Association's behalf. Cottrell had an international reputation as a financial historian of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His interests ranged widely, but he had particular expertise in English banking history in the nineteenth century and the financial reconstruction of Europe after the First World War. His main publications, notably Industrial Finance 1830-1914: The Finance and Organization of the English Manufacturing Industry (1980), remain standard works in their field. He died in 2013.

The first ever study of its kind on the history of private banking Long-term historical comparative perspective Written by leading scholars in the field A multi-disciplinary work, of interest to economists, historians and social scientists