4 ms·

Some nice insights but I think you downplayed the catalytic role the development of banking and finance had during the 18-19th century, in both Britain and the

• woodandsteel 10y ago
  As Paul Kennedy explains in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, one consequence of the unending warfare in Europe was the development of better financial institutions such as central banks. The problem is that warfare is very expensive, so states were always going broke, and the one that won a war tended to be the one that ran out of funds last. As a result there was a lot of innovation in matters like national budgeting and financial regulations. By coincidence, I am reading Alfred Zimmern's The Greek Commonwealth, which has extensive discussion of the economics of classical Athens. The government there had no budget, just a bunch of containers for funds for different purposes, and new expenses were just voted on, along with how the money would be raised, as they came up.