Origins Of Banking

Many of today’s banking services were first practiced in ancient Lydia, Phoenicia, China, and Greece, where trade and commerce flourished. The temples in Babylonia made loans from their treasuries as early as 2000 bc. The temples of ancient Greece served as safe-deposit vaults for the valuables of worshipers. The Greeks also coined money and developed a system of credit. The Roman Empire had a highly developed banking system, and its bankers accepted deposits of money, made loans, and purchased mortgages. Shortly after the fall of Rome in ad 476, banking declined in Europe.

The increase of trade in 13th-century Italy prompted the revival of banking. The moneychangers of the Italian states developed facilities for exchanging local and foreign currency. Soon merchants demanded other services, such as lending money, and gradually bank services were expanded.

The first bank to offer most of the basic banking functions known today was the Bank of Barcelona in Spain. Founded by merchants in 1401, this bank held deposits, exchanged currency, and carried out lending operations. It also is believed to have introduced the bank check. Three other early banks, each managed by a committee of city officials, were the Bank of Amsterdam (1609), the Bank of Venice (1587), and the Bank of Hamburg (1619). These institutions laid the foundation for modern banks of deposit and transaction.

For more than 300 years, banking on the European continent was in the hands of powerful statesmen and wealthy private bankers, such as the Medici family in Florence and the Fuggers in Germany. During the 19th century, members of the Rothschild family became the most influential bankers in all Europe and probably in the world. This international banking family was founded by German financier Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812), but it soon spread to all the major European financial capitals.

The Bank of France was organized in 1800 by Napoleon. The bank had become the dominant financial institution in France by the mid-1800s. In Germany, banking experienced a rapid development about the middle of the 19th century with the establishment of several strong stock-issuing, or publicly owned, banks.

Banking in the British Isles originated with the London goldsmiths of the 16th century. These men made loans and held valuables for safekeeping. By the 17th century English goldsmiths created the model for today’s modern fractional reserve banking—that is, the practice of keeping a fraction of depositors’ money in reserve while extending the remainder to borrowers in the form of loans. Customers deposited gold and silver with the goldsmiths for safekeeping and were given deposit receipts verifying their ownership of the gold deposited with the goldsmith. These receipts could be used as money because they were backed by gold. But the goldsmiths soon discovered that they could take a chance and issue additional receipts against the gold to other people who needed to borrow money. This worked as long as the original depositors did not withdraw all their gold at one time. Hence, the amount of receipts or claims on the gold frequently exceeded the actual amount of the gold, and the idea that bankers could create money was born.

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