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methodological inspirations from the field of behavioural finance the book analyses a broad range of published and unpublished English French Greek German and Swiss sources on European investment in Greece between 1821 and the Balkan wars.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. The Open Access version of this book available at www.taylorfrancis.com has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license. |European Investment in Greece in the Nineteenth Century A Behavioural Approach to Financial History | Economics
