Former GloCoBank Research Associate - European Networks, Jamieson Myles, now at University of Geneva, presented a paper at the 2026 BHC Meeting which was held in London on 26-28 March. For conference details visit 2026 BHC Meeting | The Business History Conference
"Internationalising the French Franc: Trade Finance, Banking Networks, and the Paris Acceptance Market, 1928-1936"
Jamieson Gordon Myles
An influential narrative in financial and monetary history links the Great Depression to the absence of cooperation between central banks in London, New York, and Paris. Often downplayed in that narrative are the competitive dynamics resulting from New York and Paris’s attempts to develop money markets based on bills of exchange (or “acceptances”) to challenge London’s discount market, an institution key to the pre-WWI international gold standard’s management. While efforts to build an acceptance market in New York are well documented, the institutional reform of the Paris market remains understudied; indeed, the limited recent scholarship on its history has focused primarily on the reform’s domestic policy objectives, whereas earlier studies on its international dimensions lack a clear empirical foundation. This paper bridges this divide by reappraising the motivations and challenges related to the Paris acceptance market’s creation and early evolution. Using qualitative archival data from private banks, the Banque de France, and the French government, it highlights New York’s role as a model for reformers even as the Paris market developed distinct features—most notably, the emergence of a specialised joint-venture banking institution which dominated the market. Reformers viewed the acceptance market and payment system as interlinked, so the investment and commercial banks involved relished these institutional innovations insofar as they might lead to increased inflows of foreign interbank deposits. For the Banque de France, meanwhile, establishing an acceptance market was essential to enhance its control of monetary conditions and the foreign exchanges. This attempt at institutional co-creation was indicative of public and private stakeholders’ shared goal: to internationalise the French franc and enhance France’s political influence in Europe and beyond. However, their ambitions were frustrated by a rigid commitment to the principle that acceptances should only finance “real” economic activity—an approach increasingly out of step with practices elsewhere.
