Bank of England Founded
Chartered to fund William III's war against Louis XIV's France. A consortium of London merchants lent the Crown £1.2M at 8 percent interest. In exchange, the Bank of England received a monopoly on issuing banknotes and the right to operate as a joint-stock bank, privileges denied to every competitor for more than a century. The arrangement produced the first sustainable sovereign debt market in modern history. Every subsequent central bank inherited its basic structure.
The deal was simple: the state got capital, the bank got sovereignty. Every modern central bank — from the Fed to the ECB — inherits this 1694 bargain, whether openly or not.
02 · Central Banks & Chartered Co.
States outsourced finance to joint-stock monopolies. The Bank of England (1694) and the East India Company became quasi-sovereigns — they issued currency, ran armies, and shaped what 'news from abroad' meant in coffeehouses from London to Amsterdam.
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