Financial History Network 2024 Webinar Series
On Monday, June 10th, at 11:00 U.S. Eastern Standard Time (EST) / 16:00 London (BST), Catherine Schenk (Professor of Economic and Social History, University of Oxford) will give the keynote talk Moving Money – Redesigning the Global Payments System, 1969-99. Professor Schenk's talk is the last session of the Financial History Network’s 2024 webinar series. See abstract below or download paper here.
The cross-border payments system is the fundamental plumbing of globalisation, allowing day-to-day movement of money across borders. Although the 20th-century evolution of the system has not yet attracted much attention from historians, it has features that make historical analysis particularly apt, and the lecture will highlight the way that a focus on correspondent banking can shed fresh light on the well-studied process of internationalisation of banking and finance in the 20th century. This paper also addresses how the balance between private and public interests was negotiated in the design of the architecture of global payments since 1969, drawing on archival records from banks and central banks in the USA, UK and Europe to take the long view of the evolution of the underlying plumbing of the international economic system, with a particular focus on the origins of two institutions that are still with us: SWIFT and CLS.
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FHN convenors
