Danish Banking Before and After the Napoleonic Wars
DANISH BANKING BEFORE AND AFTER THE NAPOLEONIC WARS Michael Märcher MICHAEL MÄRCHER 127 DANISH BANKING BEFORE AND A F T E R T H E N A P O L E O N I C W A R S : A SURVEY OF DANISH BANKING, 1736–1857 Expensive armament during ‘The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) led to excessive note-issuing from the only bank, Kurantbanken, in Denmark. One of the con- sequences was that the notes were declared inconvertible in 1757. This difficult situation for the monetary system and banking in Denmark generally lasted from 1757, through the bankruptcy of the state in 1813 and the founding of the Danish central bank, Danmarks Nationalbank, in 1818, until the reintroduction of the silver standard in 1845. The first two commercial banks in Denmark, Centralkassen i Kjøbenhavn and Fyens Discontokasse, were founded in 1829 and 1846 respectively, and the latter became quite important. The first large, modern, and significant -com 1 mercial bank was however the Privatbanken i Kjøbenhavn founded in 1857. This article presents main features in Danish banking before 1857 and consists of two main chapters: the first covers the period before the Napo- 2 leonic Wars, the second deals with the period after. Figure 1 illustrates the 1. On the first commercial banks in Denmark see e.g. Julius Schovelin (1921): Fyens Diskontokasse 1846-1921, Odense; Einar Cohn (1957): Privatbanken i Kjøbenhavn gennem hundrede Aar: 1857– 1957, I–II, Copenhagen; Svend Aage Hansen (1960): Pengevæsen og kredit 1813–1860, Odense; Ole Lange (2006): Stormogulen: C.F. Tietgen – en finansmand, hans imperium og hans tid 1829–1901, Copenhagen.
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