Dangerous and Dishonest Men: The International Bankers of Louis XIV’s France. By Guy Rowlands. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Edited by Adrian R. Bell, D’Maris Coffman, and Tony K. Moore.New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pp. xvi+266. $115.00.

2016 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 938-939
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Luckett
Keyword(s):  
History Of ◽  
History Of Finance

“Unable to Dismiss Them”: Re-assessing the Jewish “Court Bankers” of Abbasid Baghdad, 908–932

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 25-54
Author(s):  
Jennifer Grayson
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Global History ◽  
Central State ◽  
Tax Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Finance

Abstract Economic historians describe the emergence of Jewish court bankers presiding over a central state bank in Abbasid Baghdad as significant for the global history of finance. This paper, however, re-evaluates these figures in light of new insights about court cultures and institutions in the medieval Islamicate world. It argues that they should be understood primarily as middlemen in tax collection. They performed favors for individual viziers, but likely never held official titles or appointments at al-Muqtadir’s court. Rather, it was precisely their outsider status relative to elite Abbasid social networks that accounts for the longevity of their careers.

Contingency and Mysticism from Economics to Finance: Knight, Ayache, DeLillo

2021 ◽  
pp. 026327642110305
Author(s):  
Jordan Sjol
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Characteristic Form ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Risk Uncertainty ◽  
History Of Finance

The recent history of finance has been widely portrayed, by both critics and practitioners, as a story about risk. As pointed out by Mary Poovey, focusing on risk entails forgetting uncertainty. In this paper, I argue forgetting uncertainty leads to an inability to distinguish between rational and mystical modes of financial thinking. Using literary-theoretical analysis, I read three exemplary texts across each other: Frank Knight’s seminal 1921 treatise, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, which helped justify the modern corporate financial form; Elie Ayache’s 2010 The Blank Swan, a philosophical account of derivatives trading that exemplifies more recent developments in finance; and Don DeLillo’s 2013 Cosmopolis, a novel that remediates the structures of thought implied by the other texts’ philosophical commitments. This textual nexus allows me to explicate the characteristic form of financial mysticism, rendering it visible against claims that derivatives and financial theory have fully rationalized finance.

A cultural history of finance

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-195
Author(s):  
Janette Rutterford
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Finance
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