The Making of Modern Finance: Liberal Governance and the Gold Standard

231 Pages·2013·1.444 MB·English

by  Samuel Knafo

The Making of Modern Finance
The Making of Modern Finance is a path-breaking study of the construction of
liberal financial governance and demonstrates how complex forms of control by
the state profoundly transformed the nature of modern finance.
Challenging dominant theoretical conceptions of liberal financial governance
in international political economy, this book argues that liberal economic
governance is too often perceived as a passive form of governance. It situates the
gold standard in relation to practices of monetary governance which preceded it,
tracing the evolution of monetary governance from the late Middle Ages to show
how the nineteenth-century gold standard transformed the way states relate to
finance. More specifically, Samuel Knafo demonstrates that the institutions of
the gold standard helped to put in place instruments of modern monetary policy
that are usually associated with central banking and argues that the gold standard
was a prelude to Keynesian policies rather than its antithesis. The author reveals
that these state interventions played a vital role in the rise of modern financial
techniques which emerged in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
served as the foundation for contemporary financial systems.
This book will be of strong interest to students and scholars of international
political economy, economic history and historical sociology. It will appeal to
those interested in monetary and financial history, the modern state, liberal
governance, and varieties of capitalism.
Samuel Knafo is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of
Sussex, UK.
RIPE Series in Global Political Economy
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Anna Leander (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)
Formerly edited by Leonard Seabrooke (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark),
Randall Germain (Carleton University, Canada), Rorden Wilkinson (University of
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Amsterdam) and Marianne Franklin (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
The RIPE series editorial board are:
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(Indiana University, USA), Eric Helleiner (Trent University, Canada), Otto
Holman (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Marianne H. Marchand
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College, USA), Robert O’Brien (McMaster University, Canada), Henk Overbeek
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UK), V. Spike Peterson (University of Arizona, USA) and Rorden Wilkinson
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Wealth, poverty and the temporal The Making of Modern Finance
walls of capitalism Liberal governance and the gold
David L. Blaney and standard
Naeem Inayatullah Samuel Knafo
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The Making of Modern Finance
Liberal governance and the gold standard
Samuel Knafo
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Samuel Knafo
The right of Samuel Knafo to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
Typeset in Times by
Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Knafo, Samuel.
The making of modern finance : liberal governance and the gold standard
/ Samuel Knafo.
p. cm. -- (RIPE series in global political economy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Finance. 2. Finance--History. 3. Finance--Government policy--History.
4. Gold standard. 5. Finance--Great Britain. 6. Gold standard--Great
Britain. I. Title.
HG173.K59 2013
332.4'222--dc23
2012043142
ISBN13: 978-0-415-63347-5 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-52302-5 (ebk)
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