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The London Stock Exchange: A History. By Ranald C. Michie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 688 pp. Tables, diagram. Cloth, $110.00. ISBN 0-198-29508-1.
Reviewed by Christopher Armstrong
The London Stock Exchange will be 200 years old in 2001, and its executive decided to allow Ranald Michie the run of its archives to prepare a scholarly history. Analyzing an institution in decline can be particularly illuminating, since it counteracts the historian's naturally Whiggish inclination to frame the story as one of progress from origins to proud maturity. Instead, one is compelled to take account not only of the factors that spawned success but also of what changed through time. Such an approach seems particularly well suited to the LSE, for it faces a murky future: a recently proposed merger with the Frankfurt Stock Exchange has apparently foundered, and it is now the target of a hostile takeover bid by a Swedish information technology company.
A century ago, such a fate would have seemed unimaginable, as the LSE was one of the central institutions of the capitalist world. Yet even then there were some ominous portents. The importance of the exchange had always rested...