This study of the financial structure of nearly a dozen of premodern countries, that is, before the eighteenth century, may be regarded as a supplement to the work I have done over the past decades on the financial systems of a number of individual countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (United States, Brazil, India, Japan, and Mexico) and on a comparative basis for a larger number of countries in Financial Structure and Development (1969) and in Comparative National Balance Sheets (1985). Although it tries, as those studies did, to use as far as possible quantitative data, this obviously can be done only to a much more limited extent, and whatever data are available are much less comprehensive and are subject to larger margins of uncertainty, but such a sometimes hazardous approach has been regarded as preferable to an entirely qualitative description.

Limitations of time, space, energy, and of the available literature have made it necessary to concentrate the study on 10 cases, the selection of which is explained in Chapter 1. Although an attempt has been made to facilitate comparisons by covering the same features of financial structure in the various chapters and in the same order, the limitation of the available literature has led to considerable differences in the detail of their treatment and in the reliability of the descriptions.