Late 18th and 19th Centuries
In the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, spurred at first by financing required for the Napoleonic wars and then by the expansion of railroads, banks evolved for the first time to operate by way of commerce, that is to accept demand deposits and provide business loans, instead of only functioning for the good of the state. Before 1776 there were only three commercial banks on the landmass known then as America. During this period a large number of comercial banks were established in a number of different countries. This included banks such as the Commercial Bank of Scotland which was founded in 1810 and the Bank of New South Wales which was dated to 1817.
Jews were founders and leaders of many of the important early European banks, as well as significant banks in the United States. Several Jewish bankers became extremely influential, successfully competing with non-Jewish banking houses in the floating of government loans.
Read more about this topic: History Of Banking
Famous quotes containing the words late and/or centuries:
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“Other centuries had their driving forces. What will ours have been when men look far back to it one day? Maybe it won’t be the American Century, after all. Or the Russian Century or the Atomic Century. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Phil, if it turned out to be everybody’s century, when people all over the world—free people—found a way to live together? I’d like to be around to see some of that, even the beginning.”
—Moss Hart (1904–1961)