The Venetian Money Market - by Reinhold C Mueller (Paperback)

About the Book

It sets banking--and panics--in the context of more generalized and recurrent crises involving territorial wars, competition for markets, and debates over interest rates and the question of usury.

Book Synopsis

The long awaited conclusion to the magisterial Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice.

Originally published in 1997. In 1985 Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller published the magisterial Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, volume 1: Coins and Moneys of Account. Now, after ten years of further research and writing, Reinhold Mueller completes the work that he and the late Frederic Lane began. The history of money and banking in Venice is crucial to an understanding of European economic history. Because of its strategic location between East and West, Venice rapidly rose to a position of preeminence in Mediterranean trade. To keep trade moving from London to Constantinople and beyond, Venetian merchants and bankers created specialized financial institutions to serve private entrepreneurs and public administrators: deposit banks, foreign exchange banks, a grain office, and a bureau of the public debt. This new book clarifies Venice's pivotal role in Italian and international banking and finance. It also sets banking--and panics--in the context of more generalized and recurrent crises involving territorial wars, competition for markets, and debates over interest rates and the question of usury.

Review Quotes

This book is a mine of information and a most reliable guide to the Venetian Money Market. For many years to come it will constitute an essential tool for an serious study related to the history of Venice and its economy.

--Benjamin Arbel "Mediterranean Historical Review"

This is the kind of book that is all too rare in modern historical scholarship. It is at once meticulously researched, granitically organized, perceptively argued, and eminently readable. The last is no mean achievement when one considers the subject matter. Banks, investments, credit, and debt may be important for our understanding of medieval and Renaissance Italy, but as anyone who has balanced a checkbook or read an annuity report can attest, it can all be dreadfully boring. Not so here.

--Thomas FMadden "Sixteenth Century Journal"

This volume is an outstanding example of meticulous, readable, wide-ranging scholarship . . . [It] is careful . . . brilliant study.

--John E. Dotson "Speculum"

About the Author

Reinhold C. Mueller is associate professor of history at the University of Venice, Italy. He is co-author, with Frederic C. Lane, of Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice and author of numerous studies on Venetian social and economic history.