In June 2007, a conference on Banking and Finance in the Mediterranean - A Historical Perspective was organised by the European Association for Banking and Financial History in Malta.
This volume includes the papers presented at this conference.
Funded and logistically supported by the Bank of Valletta and the Central Bank of Malta, the conference and hence the book brings together a number of valuable contributions on Mediterranean banking and financial history.
Considering that the conference was held in Malta, the first contributions regarded Malta.
Michael Bonello, who at the time was the Governor of the Central Bank, gives an overview of the Maltese economy and the ties between Malta's economic history and the wider commercial and financial networks across the Mediterranean over the past centuries.
John Consiglio writes about Malta's banking history paying due homage to the Tagliaferro and Scicluna families and above all to Louis E. Galea, seen within the economic and political contest of the times.
Joseph C. Sammut, Malta's leading numismatist, expounds on the numismatic history of Malta over two millennia, from Roman times.
The scene then pans out to a more general Mediterranean context. Massimiliano Affinito and Riccardo de Bonis from the Bank of Italy ask whether the banking systems of 19 Mediterranean countries point to a convergence process. Mediterranean banking convergence, the authors show, is weaker than that for example of some 20 European countries.
A fascinating article is that by Edhem Eldem on the Imperial Ottoman Bank of Turkey from 1875 to 1914 when the bank practically acted as the Central Bank of the nascent Turkish republic.
The third part of this important conference groups three papers. Ioanna Sapho Pepelasis elsewhere called Minoglou, from the Economic University of Greece examines the non-bank financial corporate start-ups in Greece between national independence in 1830 and 1909. Juan Carles Maixe-Altes from the University of La Coruna studies and compares cooperative and mutual banks in France, Italy and Spain. Alex Apostolides from the London School of Economics and Athanasios Gekas from the European University Institute of Florence give us a fascinating insight into the activity of the Ionian Bank from the 1840s to the 1920s - which has to be looked at within the context of the political development of the time, when the bank was, we might say, one of the first multinational banks in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In the fourth group of essays, Nuno Valerio from the Technical University of Lisbon deals with central banks and monetary standards in the Mediterranean region. Pablu Martin Acena from the Universidad de Alcala, writes about central banking in the Iberian peninsula from the beginning as the Bank of St Charles in 1782, the forerunner of the Bank of Spain. Gerard Chastagnaret from the Universite de Provence describes how the Mediterranean area adapted to the changes brought about by the revolutionary upheavals from 1789 to 1814 as the area started to industrialise.
In the last section of the book, Maria Teresa Tortella from the Bank of Spain's archives and Gabriel Tortella from Madrid's University of Alcala give a brief history of the Banque d'Etat du Maroc, founded in 1907 before the Moroccan State came into existence. Catherine Dardignac (Societe Generale) and Roger Nougaret (Credit Agricole) reveal what can be found in the archives of French banks. Finally, Paola Avallone and Giovanni Lombardi from the Centro Nazionale di Ricerca in Naples disclose what can be found in the archives of the Banco di Napoli.
John A. Consiglio, Juan Carlos Martinez Oliva and Gabriel Tortella
Banking and Finance in the Mediterranean
Ashgate Publishing
2013
336pp