Charles P. Kindleberger (1910-2003) and the beginning of studies on the history of global and national financial centres

The article deals with one of the key aspects of the research work of the outstanding American economist, historian and government official Charles Poor Kindleberger (1910-2003): a study of the rise of cities as financial centres at national and international levels. Such analysis, presented mainly in one specialized work by Kindleberger (1974), despite its relative brevity, laid the foundation for a new and very noticeable trend in contemporary interdisciplinary research. Basing his study on the data for seven countries of North America and Western Europe (thus underestimating Asia's emerging financial success), Kindleberger showed the formation and development of their business metropolises from the 18th and 19th centuries until the 1970s. The most important regularity that the scholar emphasized when considering such material was the tendency of most national financial systems to the gradual establishment of a single dominant centre. In addition, Kindelberger examined in a similar way the major historical milestones with regard to the change of the leading cities in the global financial arena. The conclusions made by the American researcher regarding the current situation for him (that is, for the first half of the 1970s), as well as the predictions that logically emerged from them, are tested in the article on the basis of an expanded array of independent statistical data. Such a comparison shows, although not absolute, but very high accuracy of most of Kindleberger's observations, which undoubtedly gives his pioneering study additional academic value.