The Origins of Commercial Banking in America, 1750-1800

(Paperback)

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The nature of America's early economy has been contested for several decades. Historians have often focused on the question of when America became "capitalist", while economists have tried to determine when American economic growth sped up. In "The Origins of Commercial Banking in America" Robert Wright addresses both questions and argues that the ultimate causes of American economic development and transformation into a modern society can be reduced to the causes of American commercial banking. Wright analyzes why American banking arose when, and with the particular characteristics, it did.

Reviews

This volume stands as the new starting point for gaining an understanding of the evolution of U.S. commercial banking. By revising the analytical model for all subsequent historians who embark on an examination of the origins of U.S. commercial banking, Robert Wright has made a major scholarly contribution. -- Edwin J. Perkins * H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online *
Recommended for graduate and research collections. * Choice Reviews *
The many useful facts and characterizations of early American banking make this book a significant contribution. * Journal of Economic History *
A welcome addition to this ongoing research effort. His extensive archival and secondary research enables Wright to paint a penetrating portrait of the development of one aspect of the nation's early financial historycommercial banksand demonstrate that their appearance played a central role in the economic and social changes that swept Revolutionary America....The Origins of Commercial Banking is an impressive work that deserves a wide audience among historians of early America's economic and social life. * Business History Review *
This work is recommended for economic historians interested in financial and banking history and the revolutionary period. * American Historical Review *
Wright. . . carefully recounts the political battles between rising middling entrepreneurs and established commercial interests over what kinds of institutions they wished to create. * Enterprise & Society *
One of the strengths of this book of this book is that it approaches its subject by looking at the colonial economy and the impact of the Revolution. This work argues persuasively that illiquidity defied the colonial economy. This is a very useful study of early mercantile practice and the origins of commercial banking. * Journal of American History *

Author Bio

Robert E. Wright teaches at the University of Virginia.