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Capitals of Capital: A History of International Financial Centres, 1780-2005. By Youssef Cassis, translated by Jacqueline Collier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xiv + 385 pp. Figures, tables, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $40.00. ISBN: 978-0-521-84535-9.
Reviewed by Forrest Capie
Youssef Cassis has written a highly readable narrative account of the emergence and changing fortunes of the world's leading international financial centers over the course of the last two hundred and twentyfive years. (The book, originally written in French, has been well served by the translator.) This is a topic that could easily degenerate into a dry recitation of percentage shares of this or that variable, market, or country, but that risk has been avoided here. Cassis sets out to investigate the "dynamics of the rise and decline" of the centers by means of historical and comparative analysis, serving notice from the beginning that central banks were crucial players in this process.
He tells the story in six chapters, each covering a chronological chunk, starting in the introduction with the early years, 1780 to 1840. Chapter two, "Concentration of Capital," begins in 1840 and ends in 1875; chapter three discusses globalization in the closing years of the nineteenth century; chapter four spans one war, a depression, and then war again between 1914 and 1945; chapter five, "Growth and Regulation," takes up the story...