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:
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“The Cad is the entire epitome, the complete blossom and fruit in one, of what we are told is an age of culture. Behold him in the vélodrome as he yells insanely after his kind as they tear along on their tandem machines in a match, and then ask yourself candidly, O my reader, if any age before this in all the centuries of earth ever produced any creature so utterly low and loathsome, so physically, mentally, individually, and collectively hideous?”
—Ouida [Marie Louise De La Ramée] (1839–1908)