The Bank Of England, 1891-1944, Vol. 1

The Bank of England, 1891-1944 #1

by Richard Sidney Sayers

The Bank of England in the first half of this century, though preserving old forms as its new building rose within the walls of the old, came to an altogether broader conception of central banking. Responding to the needs of two wars and the uneasy decades between. the Bank developed a new sensitivity in its care for the health of the financial system, reaching out extraordinarily into industrial reconstruction and above all showing a new internationalism in promoting reconstruction in Europe and in fostering central bank relations through widely varying parts of the world. Its effort to restore something like the pre-war system, though quickly modified under new political and economic stresses, finally collapsed in 1931; the Bank's part in this crisis and the complete readjustment of its sights in the succeeding years foreshadow international monetary events of the latter part of the century.

The story is told in Volumes 1 and 2. The Appendix Volume includes some of the more important formal documents; internal and external to the Bank, an extensive reproduction of the Bank's evidence to the Macmillan Committee, a few notes supplementary to the main story, some convenient tabulation of factual material and a list of sources private to the Bank on which statements in the text were based.

409 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 1976

About the author

Richard Sidney Sayers]was a British economist and historian specialized in the history of banking. He played an important role with regard to the development of monetary economics and the direction of British central banking.