During the fifty years from the Unification of Italy to the beginning of the Great War, the world economy and the international financial system went through deep and rapid transformations. The hierarchy of economic powers changed; growing relationships between economies and national financial markets led to the formation, for the first time in history, of a global financial system; in both individual countries and international relations, initially dominated by the metallic currency, the role of credit and bank money was increasingly expanded.
The introduction by De Cecco and the documents - from Italian, French, English and German sources - collected in this volume illustrate some significant moments in the relationship between the new Italian state and the international financial system over the course of the fifty years.
The volume is divided in three parts: the first traces the stages of Italian participation in the international monetary system; the second illustrates the main episodes of the crucial story of Italy's public debt towards the foreign countries; the third aims to clarify the closely related problems of exchange management, reserves and the rate of Consols that the economic policy authorities had, sometimes in dramatic circumstances, to face.
