This article juxtaposes two bodies of oral evidence collected in 1877–78 and 1989–91 respectively to explore the dynamics of the London Stock Exchange as a physical market. The analysis highlights the long-run continuities in the pattern, organisation and culture of trading activity. In particular, it emphasises the necessity experienced by market makers (known as jobbers) to adapt to the demands of a highly visible trading environment. More broadly, further evidence is provided of the nature and diversity of trade relationships, economic exchange and price creation.

In 1865, France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland signed a monetary convention (later known as the Latin Union), which provided for the intercirculation of specie between member states. Conventional analyses of the treaty (such as that by Willis) have portrayed this arrangement as a by-product of French power politics. This article seeks to reinterpret the economic nature of the Latin Union, focusing on the interrelations between trade, finance and money. I argue that the Latin Union did not foster trade integration and that, as a matter of fact, such was not its objective, according to archival evidence. Instead, I suggest that the Latin Union was the result of the growth of France as a major supplier of capital. The need to provide French investors with exchange-rate guarantees led borrowing countries to tie their respective monetary systems to that of France. This, in turn, created opportunities for international monetary action and the French franc became the ‘natural’ focal point of projects of monetary unification. This evolution, however, had structural limits which help to explain the downfall of the projects for expansion of the Latin Union.

Laura Stanciu, Italian multinational banking in interwar east central Europe

This article examines the interwar development of multinational investment undertaken by the most prominent Italian universal bank — Banca Commerciale Italiana — in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania, referred to here as east central Europe. It analyses the extent to which considerations concerning universal banking's development are valid in the case of Italian multinational investment in this region. The article is neither a study of the 1930s financial crisis nor an analysis of the Italian universal banking per se. Instead, it questions the implicit relationship between the fate of the activities of Banca Commerciale Italiana in east central Europe and the general problems of the universal banking system during the early 1930s. Evidence seems to suggest that the bank's withdrawal from the region, beginning in the late 1920s, was more a result of managerial shortcomings and unsound investment decisions than the crisis.

Kathleen E. A. Monteith, Competition between Barclays Bank (DCO) and the Canadian banks in the West Indies, 1926–45

This article examines the extent to which collusion ruled out competition in banking, and assesses the nature and impact of this competition in order to ascertain the degree to which Barclays Bank (DCO) faced any significant challenge to its position within the region. It is shown that the rigidity which is assumed to be characteristic of collusive agreements was not present, and that competition existed in the commercial banking market in the West Indies during this period. It is also shown that non-price competition existed in many forms, and was capable of leading to a bank's position being usurped by another.