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Center for Global Affairs Public Events
IN PRINT: Niall Ferguson - The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Historian and author Niall Ferguson discussed his new book The Ascent of Money:A Financial History of the World—about money and finance as key propellants of human progress—at the Center for Global Affairs in December 2008.
The Ascent of Money went to press in May 2008, but as The New York Times’ book critic Michiko Kakutani wrote recently, “It shrewdly anticipate(d) many aspects of the current financial crisis, which has toppled banks, precipitated gigantic government bailouts and upended global markets.”
Ferguson was interviewed by James F. Hoge, editor and Peter G. Peterson chair of Foreign Affairs, as part of the CGA’s ongoing In Print series of book talks with leading authors. Their wide-ranging talk addressed current questions posed by the global economic crisis, including: the decline of the free market; whether another, more severe, economic downturn is coming; and the political impact the recession could have on developing states.
About the book
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Bread, cash, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history. Through Ferguson’s expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world’s first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer. |
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Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School. He is a resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He is also a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. The bestselling author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, and The War of the World, he is also a contributing editor of the Financial Times. His latest book is The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. A television adaptation will air on PBS in January.
James F. Hoge is editor and Peter G. Peterson Chair of Foreign Affairs, a bi-monthly magazine of analysis and commentary on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. During his 16 years as editor, Foreign Affairs has more than doubled its circulation to an all-time high of 160,000 and has also launched editions in Spanish, Japanese and Russian. Prior to joining Foreign Affairs, Mr. Hoge spent three decades in newspaper journalism as a Washington correspondent, then editor and publisher of The Chicago Sun-Times and finally as publisher of The New York Daily News. Under his direction, the Sun-Times won six Pulitzer Prizes and the Daily News one. He is the Chairman of the International Center for Journalists, serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, and is an active member of the CGA advisory board.