Routledge Focus on Financial History
About the Book Series
‘Routledge Focus on Financial History’ is a series of short form (20,000-50,000 words), accessible books telling the origin stories behind financial instruments, innovations and institutions. Each book provides historical context on the early development of topics such as investments, money, insurance, banking, central banks and financial theory. The emphasis is on engaging storytelling and clarity, making these topics interesting and understandable to a non-specialist audience.
Goldsmith Banking: A History
1st Edition
By Mabel Winter
June 10, 2026
In seventeenth-century England goldsmiths became what we would now recognise as bankers. Goldsmiths’ shops sold not only gold and silver plate but also instruments of credit, such as bonds and bills of exchange, and offered ‘safe’ places to lodge capital at interest. As well as offering financial ...
The Tontine: A History
1st Edition
By Andrew McDiarmid
October 04, 2024
From the last decades of the seventeenth century until the beginning of the twentieth, the tontine, in one form or another, was a ubiquitous financial instrument. As a revenue-raising tool of governments it supported the cost of war, and as a private capital-raising instrument it provided funding ...