The Italians and the Arabs have invented the banking

The checking account, the credit, the Discount of the MRP, the bankrupt (banco rotto) – much of what has to do with our daily financial currents, is still the case today, as Italian merchants of the 14th century. Century, it invented in Genoa, Venice and especially in Florence. If you were at the Banco, a table similar Market, the currencies, the money changer on the street-stocked as other traders in fruit and vegetables, then it went to asset management, Lending operations, deposits in other companies, securities and overdraft loans.

no, the Italians were not the only capitalists under the sun. Yes, the Arabs and the Romans knew of the Exchange of letters and the Chinese paper-money. But the banking sector is, like his notion of the betrayed, a uritalienische invention. Italy, with its city republics of the rotary was the focal point of a commercial Revolution in the European late middle ages occurred.

In Italy, the long-distance trade came together flows between the Orient, Central Europe and the Hanseatic League, in Italy, a lot of goods came through and money also, and not least by the Catholic Church, the most awaited by the faithful on a pilgrimage to Rome and Holy years and jubilees, and indulgences came up, to let the cash registers ringing. The great rise of the Medici family of Florence began, as they were bankers of the Pope.

cash had but pitfalls. For merchants, it was risky to carry large amounts of cash over large distances. In addition, it tended to be a ruler with a coin-operated coder really to cheat (i.e., coins with a lower precious metal value), therefore, the financial system was dependent even then on the idea of paper money.

the Italians were able to count, therefore, sooner better than others, because they a) had invented the principle of double-entry bookkeeping, and b) began to quantify things in a pragmatic way-Arabic instead of Roman-awkward. Roman numerals were not just the ultimate, to divide large amounts, or multiply. Or have you ever tried a fraction with MMCCCLXXVIII? It’s a customs officer’s son from Pisa, who wrote instead of just 2378 and the accounting on Arabic in Europe introduced.

Without a Tuscan accountant who took the mathematics, this long-neglected arithmetic, around 1200, would have been passed the finances of the European ruling houses never so successful of Italy. Bankruptcy, the financial merchants of Florence, went for the first time in 1350, when Edward III of England, the gorge of the hundred years war, his debts could pay.

the night country Goes down? For all cases we present in this series, once again its ingredients. All of the previously published follow welt.de/abendland