This is the story of the financial panic of 1837 and its remarkable outcome for the British merchant bank Baring Brothers & Company. It is the story of a bank's response to unusual events during the transformation of American life in the 1830s, and the effect of this transformation on Barings and global finance long term.

Events of the 1830s took place amidst changes that began before the French Revolution, and accelerated in England, Continental Europe, the United States and elsewhere around the world with the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

The years 1770–1815 put in place that clutch of marvels of the Industrial Revolution involving textiles, steam, patent protection, coal, machines and factories that made Great Britain the first nation in history to achieve sustained economic growth. The French Revolution started the process in France to sweep away privilege that would give that country a politics sufficiently liberal to follow a growth path similar to England's. When the long eighteenth century came to peace in 1815, the energy and talents of so many – distracted by war for so long – were freed, and the world could pursue in full measure those aspects of industry, technology and trade that peace allowed.

Free from war in Europe, the western powers scrambled for land worldwide, and human activity spread to all quarters of the globe. Russia expanded to the south and east. Canadians and Americans went west. Britain committed itself to India and the subcontinent, fortified its wartime base at Singapore and thrust inland from coastal enclaves in South Africa and Australia to create in rough form the nations we see today.