This book offers 14 contributions that examine key questions in bank decision-taking,constitution of confidence in banks and risk management practices from Early Modernity to the twentieth century. It explores how the various mechanisms of bank decision taking changed over time. Chapters also analyse the types of risk management techniques used, the contributory factors to the constitution of confidence and the methods that banking historians can use to analyse and describe bankers risk management and decision taking - from system theory to behavioural finance, new institutional economics to praxeology and convention theory to network analysis. The different methodological approaches are put to the test in case studies based on archive material from four hundred years of banking in order to connect banking history more closely to political and cultural history.

Tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax resistance are widespread phenomena in political, economic, social and fiscal history from antiquity through medieval, early modern and modern times. Histories of Tax Evasion, Avoidance and Resistance shows how different groups and individuals around the globe have succeeded or failed in not paying their due taxes, whether in kind or in cash, on their properties or on their crops. It analyses how, throughout history, wealthy and poor taxpayers have tried to avoid or reduce their tax burden by negotiating with tax authorities, through practices of legal or illegal tax evasion, by filing lawsuits, seeking armed resistance or by migration, and how state authorities have dealt with such acts of claim making, defiance, open resistance or elusion. It fills an important research gap in tax history, addressing questions of tax morale and fairness, and how social and political inequality was negotiated through taxation. It gives rich insights into the development of citizen-state relationships throughout the course of history. The book comprises case studies from Ancient Athens, Roman Egypt, Medieval Europe, Early Modern Mexico, the Ottoman Empire, Nigeria under British colonial rule, the United Kingdom of the early 20th century, Greece during the Second World War, as well as West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and the United States in the 20th century, including transnational entanglements in the world of late-modern offshore finance and taxation. The authors are experts in fiscal, economic, financial, legal, social and/or cultural history. The book is intended for students, researchers and scholars of economic and financial history, social and world history and political economy. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license.

Banking historiography often does not sufficiently take into account bankers' deliberations of their decision making, but rather limits investigation to considerations of profit maximisation. This book shows that the decision-making processes of nineteenth-century bankers contemplating high-risk financial markets like Greece are just as complex as present-day investment decisions. The book, now published in English after a first German edition, offers in-depth studies of decision making in concrete historical situations, considering political and economic circumstances and also the individual background of the actors concerned, including a reflection on the influence of cultural movements such as Philhellenism. Employing methodological inspirations from the field of behavioural finance, the book analyses a broad range of published and unpublished English, French, Greek, German and Swiss sources on European investment in Greece between 1821 and the Balkan wars. Additionally, rich insights into Greek economic history, the economic integration of the country into Europe and long-lasting European stereotypes of Southern Europe and Greece are provided; this furthers understanding of the historical background of the Greek financial crisis after 2009. In combining the perspectives of financial, economic, political and cultural history, this book is primarily significant for students of various fields of historiography. Due to its strong awareness of methodological questions, it is also of great interest to academic historians. In addition, the strong public interest in the Greek financial crisis after 2009 and its consequences for Europe will, thirdly, attract the interest of a broader public.

Banking historiography often does not sufficiently take into account bankers' deliberations of their decision making, but rather limits investigation to considerations of profit maximisation. This book shows that the decision-making processes of nineteenth-century bankers contemplating high-risk financial markets like Greece are just as complex as present-day investment decisions. The book, now published in English after a first German edition, offers in-depth studies of decision making in concrete historical situations, considering political and economic circumstances and also the individual background of the actors concerned, including a reflection on the influence of cultural movements such as Philhellenism. Employing methodological inspirations from the field of behavioural finance, the book analyses a broad range of published and unpublished English, French, Greek, German and Swiss sources on European investment in Greece between 1821 and the Balkan wars. Additionally, rich insights into Greek economic history, the economic integration of the country into Europe and long-lasting European stereotypes of Southern Europe and Greece are provided; this furthers understanding of the historical background of the Greek financial crisis after 2009. In combining the perspectives of financial, economic, political and cultural history, this book is primarily significant for students of various fields of historiography. Due to its strong awareness of methodological questions, it is also of great interest to academic historians. In addition, the strong public interest in the Greek financial crisis after 2009 and its consequences for Europe will, thirdly, attract the interest of a broader public.

This book offers 14 contributions that examine key questions in bank decision-taking,constitution of confidence in banks and risk management practices from Early Modernity to the twentieth century. It explores how the various mechanisms of bank decision taking changed over time. Chapters also analyse the types of risk management techniques used, the contributory factors to the constitution of confidence and the methods that banking historians can use to analyse and describe bankers risk management and decision taking - from system theory to behavioural finance, new institutional economics to praxeology and convention theory to network analysis. The different methodological approaches are put to the test in case studies based on archive material from four hundred years of banking in order to connect banking history more closely to political and cultural history.

Der in den Zwanziger Jahren erregt gefuhrte Krisendiskurs erklarte die Gegenwartsprobleme der Weimarer Republik zum Hohepunkt einer Krise der Moderne insgesamt. Aus dieser Perspektive heraus erschien es sinnlos, die Verhaltnisse zu reformieren, ein radikaler Neuentwurf war notig, um die Strukturdefekte der Moderne zu uberwinden. Diese Lage bildet den historischen Hintergrund, vor dem sich die im vorliegenden Band versammelten Beitrage mit den Vorstellungen von Staat und Gemeinschaft im George-Kreis beschaftigen. Den Anhangern des Dichters ging es darum, einer prekaren Gegenwart das Ideal des "schonen Lebens" gegenuberzustellen: als Heilmittel gegen Ordnungsverlust, gesellschaftliche Konflikte und innere Zerrissenheit. Die im George-Kreis entwickelten Gemeinschaftsvorstellungen zielten darauf ab, ausgewahlten Mitgliedern die Moglichkeit zu geben, ihr ganzheitliches Menschsein zu entwickeln und ihre asthetischen und intellektuellen Potentiale unter der Fuhrung eines Meisters, Stefan Georges, zu entfalten. Die Frage, ob daruber hinaus durch das Modell einer solchen Gemeinschaft die Gesellschaft als Ganze verandert und ein "Neues Reich" geschaffen werden konnte, entstand bei einzelnen Mitgliedern des Kreises schon vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg, blieb jedoch heftig umstritten. Die Beitrage des Bandes analysieren auch, auf welche Weise sich die Vorstellungen von Staat und Gemeinschaft im Denken, in der literarischen und wissenschaftlichen Produktion sowie den Lebensentwurfen der Kreismitglieder manifestierten. Im Rahmen des George-Kreises wurde das Idealbild einer guten Ordnung nicht im Bereich des Utopischen belassen, sondern in der Lebens- und Forschungspraxis der Kreismitglieder zu verwirklichen versucht."

Der symbolistische Dichter Stefan George sammelte nach der Jahrhundertwende einen Kreis von Dichtern und Intellektuellen um sich, mit denen er arbeitete und lebte, und die er in ihrer wissenschaftlichen Tatigkeit unterstutzte. Es uberrascht zunachst, dass neben Literaturwissenschaftlern wie Friedrich Gundolf und Historikern wie Ernst Kantorowicz auch einige Wirtschaftswissenschaftler zu diesem "Staat" gehorten. Denn George, der alle Lebensbereiche dem der Kunst untergeordnet sehen wollte, stand dem modernen Kapitalismus sehr kritisch gegenuber und interessierte sich nicht fur okonomische Fragen. Warum ubte der Dichter auf die Okonomen dennoch eine so grosse Faszination aus, und wieso empfanden sie das Zusammensein mit ihm als Bereicherung fur ihre wissenschaftliche Tatigkeit? Edgar Salin, Julius Landmann, Arthur Salz und Kurt Singer vertraten in praktischen wirtschaftspolitischen Fragen sehr unterschiedliche Standpunkte: hier reichte das Spektrum von gemeinwirtschaftlichen bis hin zu liberalen Positionen. In methodologischer Hinsicht dagegen profitierten sie alle von den gestalttheoretischen Ansatzen des George-Kreises, wie sie z.B. Edith Landmann ausarbeitete. Salin etwa entwickelte auf dieser Basis seine "Anschauliche Theorie" fur die Volkswirtschaftslehre, die in einer Phase der methodologischen Verunsicherung des Faches nach dem Ende der Historischen Schule Orientierung bieten sollte."