In June 2007 a Conference on Banking and Finance in the Mediterranean. A Historical Perspective, organized by the European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH), was held on the beautiful island of Malta, right in the middle of the Mediterranean.
The collection of papers included in the present conference volume is probably the first ever to bring together so many valuable contributions on the subject of Mediterranean banking and financial history. Funded, and logistically excellently supported, by the Bank of Valletta and the Central Bank of Malta, the Conference was, inevitably, opened by a number of papers on Insights into Malta’s Banking and Monetary History. The ensuing threads of the Conference provided analyses on the Rise of Modern Banking and Finance in the Mediterranean, Finance and Intramediterranean Economic Relations, Money and Currency Developments in the Mediterranean, and Banking and Finance Archives.
From pure economic evolution to interregional and intraregional approaches, from diverse central bank and monetary authority evolution and roles, to what banking archival records reveal about matters other than banking proper, from restrictedly numismatic topics to pure single-country evolution of financial institutions, what goes into a possible notion of pure Mediterraneanism in the history of European banking is undoubtedly a most fascinating lifetime’s study.
Central Bank of Malta Governor Michael Bonello appropriately presents an overview of the economy of the conference’s hosting nation, Malta, and he clearly shows – in a context inspired by a perspective reminiscent of that great writer about the Mediterranean, F. Braudel – the strict ties between Malta’s economic history and the complex commercial and financial network that developed across the Mediterranean in past centuries.
The model here, one that encompasses not only the political, social and economic, but also early technology and exchange, is indeed one that can be applied to every single country in this region. The provision of goods and services to foreigners was as much a reality of early Maltese financial evolution as it was of the Venetians’, the Iberians’, Cypriots’ or others’, and for centuries on end. Volatility of both external and domestic demand continues to come up time and again as perennially impacting conjunctural cycles, and contributing to marked economic vulnerability. Such behaviour was accentuated in the closing decades of the twentieth century, following the new challenges posed by globalization. The creation of stronger ties with the European Union, and the adoption of the single currency, with its strict policy rules, today represent an important opportunity for the country to access the large European market and reduce its traditional vulnerability to external shocks.
In his overview of Malta’s banking history John Consiglio (University of Malta) moves from, but also beyond, the assumption that research into the country’s early banking history needs to be directed towards the vicissitudes of the main outstanding personalities, whose institutional activities and structures moved parallel with their other daily concerns (philanthropy, business, politics, etc), and this with extraordinary vitality. In this spirit, the lives and activities of the various Tagliaferros, Sciclunas, and the ‘father’ of contemporary Maltese banking Louis E. Galea, are shown against the background of economic and political events that characterized the British colonial era, and pre- and post-independence of the island State.
In his innovative contribution Consiglio suggests that the three main periods of Maltese banking history (viz. early 1500s to 1800, post-1800 to the mid-1960s, and post-1964) should be overviewed in a structural manner. The second part of his paper considers the potential implications that a deeper internationalization of the island might have implied in the past. This would have entailed a much longer presence on the island of the French, Italian, and British (imperial) banks, along with certain indigenous institutions, which are an integral part of the island’s banking history. As Bonin had implied in 2004 in banking too there was, from the mid-1800s up to the mid-1900s, an implied imperial design in the Mediterranean, and the road towards fuller understanding of this is either via study of individual institutions’ histories (the various Crédits Fonciers, Barclays, Ionian Bank, etc) or through construction of a matrix Mediterranean international banking model. For this second period of Malta’s banking history archival treatment is still unravelling realities, and these need to attract more scholars. Finally, Consiglio’s paper briefly tackles the concept of Mediterraneanism (ut sic) in banking, with some potentially head-on characterizing of the concept itself.
A totally different theme is the numismatic history of Malta, here treated by Malta’s leading numismatist Joseph C. Sammut. Whilst the country’s banking-history spans can, conceptually, be considered as extending over some five centuries, Sammut here shows that its numismatic story can be traced back over two millennia, and he leaves no doubt about the economic relevance of the island since Roman times. Indeed the collapse of the Roman Empire marked the disintegration of the long period of monetary unification of the Mediterranean basin under the Roman standard. The currencies of successive rulers (Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese and Castilians) dominated Maltese economic life until Emperor Charles V gave the Maltese islands to the Order of Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem by title of perpetual lease, and, in the process, these Knights also obtained the right to strike their own currency.
The long and rich numismatic history of the Order of St. John ended with the conquest of Malta by Napoleon in 1798. A few years later the Maltese initiated a popular mass revolt against those French occupiers, and this paved the way for the start of British rule in Malta as from the year 1800. The twentieth century marked the gradual move of Malta towards monetary and political independence, and closer integration into continental Europe. In 1968 the Central Bank of Malta was set up, and British coins were gradually demonetized in later years. In 1972 Malta changed over to a decimal currency and finally abandoned the old British system. The Malta Pound was renamed the Maltese Lira in 1983, with eventual conforming to the Maastricht criteria leading to the adoption of the euro soon after accession to the European Union.
Hazarding an unproved view, there will probably never be an answer to the question of where and how the first banks arose in the Mediterranean; and small island loci there will probably not provide much of an answer. The rise of banking and finance in the Mediterranean is certainly more revealing in terms of specific issue analysis, for example whether the region’s financial systems followed a path of convergence or of path dependence.
Massimiliano Affinito and Riccardo De Bonis, from the Bank of Italy, attempt a complex econometric exercise aimed at answering the question of whether the banking systems of 19 named Mediterranean countries point towards a convergence process. The empirical evidence seems to support the view that Mediterranean banking homogeneity is not what many idealists might often possibly romantically contemplate it to be. In this paper the main typical (but certainly not exclusive) indicators of loans to GDP, and deposit ratio to GDP, fed from International Monetary Fund statistics, are subjected to three methodologies of tests often animated by time and country-cluster considerations. Mediterranean banking convergence is, the authors show, weaker than that for, say, a wider sampling of some 20 European countries. And this deduction in a way supports many historians’ belief that variegated post-colonial experiences of banking evolution in the region are drastically in contrast to the evolution on the European continental hinterland after the glorious Sixties. Certainly, underlying economic and political circumstances were anything but homogeneous. Applying their tests to various smaller country sets, however, the authors find interesting real convergence clubs, for example for African and Arab countries.
The country which tops the countries’ dataset in the Affinito and De Bonis study is Algeria (alphabetically-preceding Albania does not feature!), where functional transformation of its banking industry went through phases starting after the mid-1800s. Abderrahmane Chenini, from the University of Mascara, structures his account of The Rise of Modern Banking in Algeria in strict periods (1851-1962, 1963-89, and post-1990) and, perhaps inevitably, the expected comes over in that the economic and sociological context of the system’s evolution is, almost totally, dominated by the religious and legislative frameworks under Islamic banking, and by the impact of French colonial policy.
Edhem Eldem, from Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University, is also concerned with roughly the same initial period as dealt with in Chenini’s study. He describes the 1875 to 1914 years of the history of The Imperial Ottoman Bank as a case of ‘stability against all odds’. Eldem explores the role of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, and its leading shareholder the Imperial Ottoman Bank, in radically changing the financial relations between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, in both intensity and nature. The sharp turn of 1881, and the tight control imposed by the combined efforts of the Imperial Ottoman Bank and the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, started a process of growing influence of foreign investors on the Ottoman economy, based on steady inflows of Western capital penetrating the Ottoman market at an increasing rate in ways that entailed greater control over some crucial sectors of the economy.
Looking at it in this light, one is left in no doubt that the Imperial Ottoman Bank was first and foremost an instrument of European economic expansionism, with the notable distinction that it lacked any formal or systematic allegiance to a particular country (a national but also much more a supranationally inclined institution). Such a process aligned the Ottoman Empire with the world capitalist system of the time, turning it as much as possible into an extension of international imperialism. While the contribution of the bank to the development of the Ottoman Empire was quite real, there were limits to what it could do, or was even willing to, for the Empire it served and actually lived off. Indeed, as Eldem shows, its major achievement in the medium run consisted in being able to secure its own future in an environment it could to a large extent mould, thanks to the political support it enjoyed from Europe and the leverage it had over the Ottoman government.
The third part of this important conference grouped three papers under the general theme of Finance and Intramediterranean Economic Relations. And here again the nineteenth century keeps coming up as the period during which most developments which seem to attract researchers’ focus appear or evolve. Ioanna Minoglou, from the Economic University of Greece, for example, examines the founding charters of non-bank financial corporate start-ups in Greece between national independence in 1830 and 1909, the latter being an important year in bourgeois consolidation. From the perspective of financial history, the existence of these start-ups is puzzling, and Minoglou has drawn relevant information from a recently constructed data set compiled from the founding charters of the near total population of 311 non-bank financial corporate start-ups established during the years covered by her study.
It is clear that the use of company charters as a primary source for research on Greek business history is, for the author, a relevant starting-point for mapping the world of non-bank finance in the nascent corporate sector, and it paves the way for future research. The main conclusion that must be drawn from Minoglou’s study is that the creation of non-bank financial start-ups was very significant at this time, and flexibly responded to the evolving needs of the more formal Greek financial system, and the wider general economy. Moreover, some particular types of interactions between banks and non-bank financial corporate start-ups emerge, as well as interactions of the latter with the equally interesting expansion of the Greek public sector.
A hypothetical classification of financial institutions would possibly place Minoglou’s non-bank financial corporations at the bottom of the structure. At the next level up might follow cooperative and mutual banks, and savings banks. Juan Carles Maixé-Altés, from the University of A Coruña, presents a paper that studies and compares such institutions in France, Italy and Spain. The purpose of this study, besides making a foray into the history of a little-studied banking subsector, is to survey and explain the endurance and progress of these types of banks in Mediterranean countries. It also ponders the reasons for their success in often competing with the more conventional (often stock-market valued and traded) banks. In so doing Professor Maixé-Altés analyses the similarities and differences among the savings-bank systems in all of these three countries. Indeed in the early nineteenth-century savings banks were created in Europe with charitable and social, as contrasted with generally wider economic and financial, motivations. Actually Spain had almost half a century’s delay in giving birth to its first such type of bank. After that beginning a clear evolution took place in all the three countries covered here, and we see savings banks gradually becoming full financial intermediaries, as well as competing with commercial banks in the ordinary credit markets.
While the end result of this evolutionary process came out fairly similarly in all three countries, the roads towards it were quite different. In France savings banks were closely monitored and controlled by the State, and for most of the period here considered they devoted their resources exclusively to purchasing public debt. In Italy there was the greatest domestic diversity in types of savings bank. In Spain, where they were established about half a century later than the other countries, they grew rapidly in the early part of the twentieth century.
Carles Maixé Altés tells us how under Italy’s Mussolini, and Spain’s Franco, efforts were made to channel the resources of the savings banks towards the governments’ pet projects. He then goes on to explain how in recent years there has been clear, although not total, convergence: the French government has relaxed its grip, whilst in France and Italy the financial character of these banks has been legally recognized, so that now in all three countries they are allowed to compete freely with the banks in the possibly next-higher category, viz. commercial banks. Still, however, Maixé Altés notes that their corporate structure varies from one country to another. In France the adopted form is prevalently that of the cooperative. In Italy the joint-stock structure seems preferred. Whilst in Spain the savings banks remain formally mutual or cooperative in theoretical legal basis, there is strong public intervention through appointment of board members by local governments.
When we venture farther southwards from continental Europe into the Mediterranean two colonial influences inevitably seem to dominate, the first associated with France’s role in North Africa, the second with British Mediterraneanism. The paper by Alex Apostolides from the London School of Economics and Athanasios Gekas from the European University Institute in Florence traces the activity of the Ionian Bank from the 1840s to the 1920s, as one of the first ‘multinational’ banks in the Eastern Mediterranean, an area then under British rule. The decision of the Ionian Bank to enter the Cypriot market, while reasonable and well motivated, proved to be a bad one, since the Bank’s main aim of becoming the local administration’s banker missed the target. However, rather than the failure to capture even part of the government deposits, and the competition which perhaps inevitably ensued, the main reason for the bank’s bad outcome in Cyprus was its difficulty in adapting to local practices. To this must be added poor staffing decisions that condemned the Bank to incurring heavy losses for a long period. This of course is the timeless lesson: the Ionian Bank needed to adapt to local conditions, and pick the right people for the job, to avoid a painful adjustment process.
The fourth group of papers in this conference dealt with money and currency problems, but also included a more general one by Gérard Chastagnaret on economic opportunities in the Mediterranean area. The first paper in this group is by Prof. Nuno Valério (Technical University of Lisbon) and deals with central banks and monetary standards in the Mediterranean region.
Professor Valério’s paper is both comparative and ambitious, as it tackles these standards issues not only during the interwar period but also before World War I, and with numerous excursions into the post-World War II period. The paper opens with a survey of the political situation in the area, as well as arguing a clear difference between the north and south shores of the sea: the north was populated by sovereign nations, the south by colonies. The consequences of this were sharp differences in the organization of the respective economies, and pointedly of the monetary and banking systems. While in the north each country had its own currency and central bank, in the south there were few central banks, and those that existed were controlled by the State or the bankers of the respective metropolis. Furthermore, the author describes how most northern currencies were linked among themselves through the gold standard.
The paper then goes on to describe how this situation was shattered by WWI and how each northern country stabilized its currency and empowered its central bank to resume gold convertibility at exchange rates which were widely different from those prevailing before the war. Meanwhile, in the south, the colonies were gradually becoming independent. For a while the new colonial currencies remained pegged to those of the metropolises (mainly the franc and the pound sterling). The gradual later establishing of their own central banks, and adoption of independent monetary policies, meant that in many cases the new currencies became separate, and exchange rates eventually fluctuated.
In conclusion Professor Valério states that central banks may be considered as hallmarks of mature nation States and economies. This was true in the interwar period in the Mediterranean as much as elsewhere. All nation States in the Mediterranean developed central banks either before the First World War, or during the interwar period. By contrast issuing banks were created in some, but by no means all, colonial territories during the same period. But none of these issuing banks became a fully-fledged central bank until the Second World War. It was the Second World War decolonization process that eventually endowed all Mediterranean countries with independent national States and corresponding monetary institutions, among these their central banks.
A close comparison between the two Iberian central banks and monetary systems in the nineteenth century is contained in the paper by Prof. Pablo Martín Aceña (Universidad de Alcalá). As Spain and Portugal share so many geographical and historical traits, their banking and monetary histories are also full of parallels. Both economies were underdeveloped by comparison to their northern European neighbours, and so were their banking systems. In both cases the number of joint-stock banks was limited and there was great asymmetry, as in each country there was an official bank (one cannot speak of central banks yet) that was much larger than the private joint-stock banks and dominated the money and credit market.
The Spanish ‘official’ bank had been founded in 1782 under the name of Bank of Saint Charles, and, after a series of transformations, in 1856 became the Bank of Spain. In Portugal the ‘official’ bank was the Bank of Lisbon (founded in 1821) and this became (or was replaced) by the Bank of Portugal in 1846. Although the monetary systems of both countries differed considerably, the two countries did have a few things in common. Until late in the century their economies were both broadly based upon metallic circulation: bank money (both deposits and note money) was scarce until later years, up to after 1874 in Spain, and after 1891 in Portugal.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries banknotes became the mainstay of monetary circulation in both countries. Pablo Martín Aceña also shows however that there were considerable differences both in the official banks’ behaviour and in the composition of the money supply during most of the nineteenth century. While until late in the period the main components of the money supply were metallic, in Portugal this metal was gold whilst in Spain it was silver. In both cases the reason was the nature of colonial deposits: in Spanish American colonies (mostly Peru and New Spain) silver was very abundant, but in Brazil large gold deposits were discovered in the eighteenth century. This is the reason why Portugal was the second European country to make its currency convertible to gold, after England, in 1854. But the gold standard lasted in Portugal for less than half a century, as it was suspended in 1891. By contrast Spain abandoned bimetallism in 1883, and adopted a silver standard which was de facto fiduciary, as silver then subsequently depreciated.
We also come across some common features in the monetary policies followed in tbe two countries at various points in time (e.g. rigidity in the handling of the official discount rate). However, whilst the Bank of Portugal became a formal bank of last resort fairly early in its life, the Bank of Spain maintained a rather aloof stance towards this possibility for quite some time, and only accepted the concept in 1913-14 when it grudgingly rescued the Banco Hispano Americano.
The last paper in this section is by Prof. Gérard Chastagnaret (Université de Provence). The core of this paper revolves around the question of how the Mediterranean area adapted to the changes brought about by the momentous upheavals which took place during the revolutionary period from 1789 to 1814. He points out that in the eighteenth century the Mediterranean economy was based upon trade, internal trade like that carried by the French port of Marseilles and intercontinental trade as carried out by the Spanish port of Cadiz. This was definitively disrupted with the turmoil of the French Revolution and the independence of the Spanish-American colonies.
Slowly the Mediterranean recovered economically from the new realities of the first half of the nineteenth century. Based upon research carried out by his disciples, Professor Chastagnaret paints a picture of how this recovery took place, emphasizing that there is no unique answer to a simple but intriguing question: where and how could one make a fortune in the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century? The paper gives a series of examples of the main sectors and types of businesses developed in the region at that time. One of these was the growth of public debt for economic reconstruction and public works: roads, railroads, ports, etc. Chastagnaret also points out that slowly but surely the Mediterranean region was starting to industrialize. Mining, metallurgy, textiles and chemicals were probably the main sectors. The area could boast of an abundance of industrial raw materials, from Egyptian cotton to sulphur in Sicily and Huelva, as well as many other metals (particularly in Spain) such as iron, copper, lead, zinc, and mercury. These were all areas of activity that attracted many investors, domestic and foreign. The author’s main examples are probably the Rothschilds, but the role played by French businessmen and financiers is also duly recognized. This very absorbing paper ends by calling attention to the importance of this period, the early nineteenth century, to a clear understanding of all the developments that took place afterwards.
Archives, and those who labour in them, are one of the great strengths of the European Association for Banking History. And this conference dedicated the whole of its last session to insights on general Mediterranean banking history, as well as to findings from particular archives. Maria Teresa Tortella, from the Bank of Spain’s archives, and Gabriel Tortella, from Madrid’s University of Alcalá, give us an example of such archival work in their case study of the Banque d’Etat du Maroc. Their paper is a case study, a brief history, of the Banque d’Etat du Maroc from the perspective of the Bank of Spain’s archives.
The Banque d’Etat du Maroc was founded in 1907, as mandated by the Treaty of Algeciras in 1906. Thirteen powers had signed that treaty, which had the objective of improving relations between the Moroccan State and the several powers, mostly European, who had economic and diplomatic interests in that country. The creation of the Banque was in fact one of the main decisions in the treaty, and the new institution was intended to solve many problems for the semi-colonial State of Morocco, which was subject to the encroachments and pressures mostly of the big four foreign European powers, viz France, Britain, Germany and Spain.
The capital of the Banque d’Etat du Maroc was held by a consortium of European banks. It was expected that the new institution would sort out the tangled accounts of the Moroccan State and enable it to pay its debts, many of which were owned by the shareholders of the Banque. It was also planned that it should play the role of financial agent of the Moroccan State, reform and improve the country’s monetary system, act as a development bank, and in general contribute to the progress and modernization of the country.
Perhaps it may have been because it was a mistake that so many objectives were given together and suddenly to a newly born institution, perhaps it may have been because of bad management; the fact remains that unfortunately the Banque was not totally successful. Serious economic and political problems remained in the country, and these led to several riots and violence. Then came another big break and in 1912 new treaties turned Morocco into a protectorate under the dual tutelage of France and Spain. The territory of the country was divided between the two ‘protectors’: more than nine-tenths went to France, while to Spain went the northern coastal strip of the country.
This division led to many institutions too being divided under these two tutelages. And the Banque d’Etat du Maroc was no exception: part of it went under Spanish control, and part of it fell under France, and this situation lasted up to 1956 when Morocco finally achieved independence. The Banque was then re-unified and nationalized, and soon after became the country’s central bank. International-relations analysts hold that in all of this process there is little to suggest that Spain’s relations with and in Morocco were of its own design. The country probably blundered into the role of an imperialist power at the prompting of its more powerful neighbours, only to then readily abandon that role when its neighbours decided that the time had come to withdraw. And the Tortellas here have a name for that: they call it ‘second-rate imperialism’.
There is another archival showpiece in this book which also deals with France, and it serves to show how sincere archivists will always jump at any opportunity to attract to their ‘house’ as many visitors as possible. It is in this light that one can best consider Catherine Dardignac (Société Générale) and Roger Nougaret (Crédit Agricole)’s exposition of their research on the archival status and extent of contents pertaining to the evolution of French banking in the Mediterranean, as available in the archives of French banks.
The presence of French banking in the Mediterranean over time extended to an impressive list of countries. The writers provide enough to convince the reader that here lies a sufficiently (in terms of both quantity and quality) rich resource for what should eventually become a multi-volume history on France’s role in Mediterranean banking history. Bouvier et al. (1986), whom the authors quote, unhesitatingly describe as ‘French-style imperialism’ how financial institutions and their instruments functioned as portents of French influence in the Mediterranean. The list of countries where French banks played key roles is remarkable. Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, practically all the Mediterranean islands, the colonies, protectorates, and mandates of France in the whole of North Africa, Lebanon, Syria, and other parts of the Orient. And the authors here clearly show how French banking archives excellently document the history of international relations with the Mediterranean countries. Indeed, these archives can also be said to go beyond that, in that they shed some light too on the domestic political and economic history of almost every Mediterranean country.
Dardignac and Nougaret insist that the insights which these archives provide about domestic financial systems, national debts and financing of infrastructures and of foreign trade are all very important. They also make the point that these archives of course tell us a lot about the social role and history of French banks in France itself. This study is supported by extremely useful appendices which list the main archive collections containing French banking-history documents. These come in two main groups. The first comprises the archives of six main banks with, particularly, those of the Société Générale group also including the archives of some dozen other formerly existing banks. The second group of archives are mainly in public repositories at Aix-en-Provence and at Roubaix. Here again, the number of documents pertaining to formerly existing banks’ life stories included in these archives is very large. In the case, for example, of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, the collection runs to no less than 47 metres of packed shelf space.
Another archival edifice of impressive standard and contents is that of the Banco di Napoli. This bank claims to be ‘the world’s oldest bank still in existence’, a claim which might also be made by the Monte dei Paschi di Siena. Cleverly avoiding that debate, Paola Avallone and Giovanni Lombardi (from the Institute of Studies on Mediterranean Societies at the Centro Nazionale di Ricerca in Naples) tell us early on about a most interesting fede di deposito, dating to 1572, which is one of the many documents in the 300 or so rooms that comprise the archives of the Banco di Napoli.
Avallone and Lombardi build their study of the historical archives of the Banco di Napoli around the treatment of different categories of documentation. These are mainly the fede di credito (in itself this type of certificate was a successor to various types of deposit receipt), the books about the Neapolitan public banks’ customer services, subsidiary record books, and control accounts (scritture riepilogative). This paper presents these archives as a very ‘human’ edifice housing ‘humanistic’ contents, and the authors show how, besides from documents, interpretation can and must here be gleaned from artifacts, seals, bindings, ‘paraphernal’ writings of officials, and other elements that show the Banco di Napoli’s role and relevance in both Italy and the wider Mediterranean.
These are archives which also show structures and strictures of jurisdictional conflict, of demographic dynamics, even of philanthropy, with the ever present monti di pietà, or banche dei poveri, playing a role here too. In their final considerations the authors rightly give prominence to the role played by the city of Naples itself in the development and practice of the earliest known accounting systems. After Luca Pacioli’s famous tractatus on double entry bookkeeping, there followed Michele Rocco’s treatise, and in between too (thanks to the authors’ discovery at the British Library) a 1764 manuscript on the accounting methods of Neopolitan public banks.
When David Landes from Harvard University wove a picture of the links between Bankers and Pashas, i.e. northern financiers and southern politicians, in the nineteenth century to conclude this very important conference, it immediately became clear that his was a challenging, albeit fruitful, task. Even if one considers the five main themes of the conference (i.e. the central hosting island’s banking history, the rise of banking and finance in the Mediterranean, IntraMediterranean economic relations, money and currency developments and archival contributions) as coming pretty close to encompassing most aspects of general Mediterranean banking history, when one delves into the detail, nuances, and variety of other themes potentially related to those dealt with here, one quickly realizes that around and in this great sea at the centre of the globe there are still many historic truths requiring still deeper study or undoubtedly even outright fresh discovery. Certainly this volume’s contents make a most valid contribution towards not the start, but the continuation, of the process of study of Mediterranean banking history.
John A. Consiglio
Juan Carlos Martínez Oliva
Gabriel Tortella