A highly distinguished team of contributors addresses the complex and crucial role of finance in European history during the period 18801960.In this major 'state of the art' survey, a highly distinguished team of contributors addresses the complex and crucial role of finance in European history during the period 18801960. The perspective throughout is global and comparative.In this major 'state of the art' survey, a highly distinguished team of contributors addresses the complex and crucial role of finance in European history during the period 18801960. The perspective throughout is global and comparative.In this major state of the art survey, a highly distinguished team of contributors addresses the complex and crucial role of finance in European history during the period 1880-1960. Throughout the volume a global and comparative perspective is used in the analysis of a problem that may in fact be perceived at four different, although interrelated levels. Firstly, the economic: What was the weight of the financial sector in a given economy? Secondly, the social: What was the specific position of the financial elites in society? Thirdly, the political: What was the impact of financial interests in politics? And finally the international: the establishment and gradual erosion of Europe's position as the world's banker. The range of both subjects and authors is truly international, and Finance and Financiers will make a powerful contribution to an area of historical debate that is of very great current interest.Preface; 1. Introduction: the weight of finance in European societies Y. Cassis; 2. Banking and industrialisation: Rondo Cameron twenty years on Sidney Pollard and Dieter Ziegler; Part I. Financial Sector and Economy: 3. The domestic commercial banks and the City of London, 18701939 P. L. Cottrell; 4. Banks and state in France from the 1880s to the 1930s: the impossible advance of the banks Andre Gueslin; 5. An overview on the role of the large Germl3V