The history of a bank is more than a chronicle of money-making; it should be both a personal history of shareholders, manager and employees, and at a macroeconomic level, a history of the organizations at the centre of national and international growth and recession. This volume comprehensively demonstrates the significance of banking history and its relations with social, political and economic history.

A wide range of leading European banking historians provide comments and practical advice on technical problems of research and writing, and discuss critically a variety of approaches they and their peers have used in their work. They bring years of experience and unrivalled expertise to bear on the complete spectrum of banking organizations, from individual institutions to central banks, and the relations between banking systems across international boundaries.

At a time when monetary union is a major issue on economic and political agendas all over Europe this book provides a much needed supra-national perspective on the reasons for, and the best practice in, the writing of banking history.