Robert Wright argues that the ultimate causes of American economic development and transformation into a modern society can be reduced to the causes of American commercial banking. Wright analyzes why American banking arose when, and with the particular characteristics, it did.
In The Origins of Commercial Banking in America, the first full analysis of the origins of American commercial banking since Bray Hammond's monumental study forty-five years ago, Robert E. Wright skillfully examines the political and economic forces that contributed to the origins and rise of banks in cities such as Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, as well as in smaller towns servicing rural America.
