The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#121

Post by agurk » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 8:59 AM UTC

Neil44 wrote: post #36

I did a walking tour of Bruges the other week and heard an interesting story about salt. Salt was a valuable commodity and could function as currency, carrying it around was risky and impractical. So there was a guild house that became a place where you could store your salt and get given a little note about how much salt they owed you. Later on if you wanted to exchange the value of your salt with someone else it be…

Looking at the wikipedia page for bank notes[0] there is no mention of salt or Bruges on the page. It suggests that bank notes first originated in China during the 7th century the knowledge of which European explorers introduced to Europe in the 13th Century. There is mention of cloth being used in Prague in 960 and the Knights Templar, as in the original article here, in 1150.

It goes on to add more details about the introduction of banknotes to solve practical problems that would be hard to summarise, but I found an interesting read.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#122

Post by onetokeoverthe » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 12:35 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #98

dgb23 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> International banks have spearheaded an absolute explosion in global economic growth. I assumed it's the other way around. Economic growth comes from technical and cultural advancements. Banks are a symptom of that growth.

Banks are a massively significant cultural innovation. I can pay someone in a different country by pressing a button and it's a reliable, robust system. In those days, it was a huge deal to be able to pay a merchant in France by giving gold, or even a paper representing ownership of gold, to a bank in England. Before, you had to send the money on a ship and hope for the best. International banks led to a massive expl…

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Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#123

Post by onetokeoverthe » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:02 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #57

In Our Time, BBC radio show with Melvyn Bragg, has an episode on the Templars; https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cpwt . Worth a listen if you're interested and want an inciteful overview.

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Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#124

Post by peter_d_sherman » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:59 AM UTC

>"But at this particular fair, gossip was starting to spread about an Italian merchant who was there, and making a fortune.

He bought and sold nothing: all he had was a desk and an inkstand.

Day after day he sat there, receiving other merchants and signing their pieces of paper, and somehow becoming very rich.

The locals were very suspicious.

But to a new international elite of Europe's great merchant houses, his activities were perfectly legitimate.

He was buying and selling debt, and in doing so he was creating enormous economic value.

A merchant from Lyon who wanted to buy - say - Florentine wool could go to this banker and borrow something called a bill of exchange. This was a credit note, an IOU, but it was not denominated in the French livre or Florentine lira.

Its value was expressed in the ecu de marc, a private currency used by this international network of bankers.

And if the Lyonnaise merchant or his agents travelled to Florence, the bill of exchange from the banker in Lyon would be recognised by bankers in Florence, who would gladly exchange it for local currency.

Through this network of bankers, a local merchant could not only exchange currencies but also translate his creditworthiness in Lyon into creditworthiness in Florence, a city where nobody had ever heard of him - a valuable service, worth paying for."

PDS: Fascinating!