Comment by danidiaz

6 years ago

I'm not knowledgeable enough to properly recommend a book on the subject so take this with a grain of salt, but I thought the historical (and opinionated) overview of the evolution of English money in Christine Desan's "Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism" was interesting https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21492062-making-money

I like this quote about how financial institutions evolved:

"It happened improvisationally, indeed probably unintentionally. Participants solved one problem and created others; they reacted as often as they acted affirmatively; they moved by experience and intuition, without an overarching theory; and the whole affair took decades, involved many different actors, and coheres largely in retrospect."