Abstract
The international financial crisis of the summer of 1931 was a fundamental turning point for London as a financial centre and for the merchant banks. Economic nationalism, which arose from and exacerbated the worldwide slump in the early 1930s, put paid to the liberal international trading environment in which the City of London and the merchant banks had flourished for a century or so. More and more the City became a domestic financial centre and the merchant banks shifted their attentions to the domestic market.1 The reorientation presented difficulties for every firm, but those such as J. Henry Schröder & Co. which conducted business on a substantial scale with Germany also had to cope with the German suspension of debt repayments in July 1931, a problem that was unresolved for more than two decades.
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Notes and References
See Richard Roberts, ‘The City of London as a financial centre in the era of the depression, the Second World War and post-war official controls’, in Anthony Gorst, Lewis Johnman and W. Scott Lucas (eds), Contemporary British History, 1931–61 (London: Pinter Publishers, 1991) pp. 11 61.
See League of Nations, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, February 1934, p. 51.
Leonard Thompson Conway, The International Position of the London Money Market 1931–1937 (unpublished dissertation: University of Pennsylvania, 1947) p. 55.
Royal Institute of International Affairs, Survey of International Affairs 1931 (London, RIIA, 1932) p. 8.
Hjalmar Schacht, Confessions of the Old Wizard (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956) p. 283.
Stephanie Diaper, ‘Merchant Banking in the Inter-War Period: the Case of Kleinwort, Sons and Co’, Business History (1986) vol. xxviii, p. 63. For Japhets, see annual reports in The Bankers’ Magazine.
Charles Gordon, The Two Tycoons (London: Hamish Hamiltion, 1985) p. 149.
Robert B Stewart, ‘Great Britain’s Foreign Loan Policy’, Economica (1938) vol. v, p. 60.
Robert B. Stewart, ‘Great Britain’s Foreign Loan Policy’, Economica (1938) vol. v, p. 59.
W. A. Thomas, The Finance of British Industry 1918–1976 (London: Methuen, 1978) pp. 116–21.
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© 1992 J. Henry Schroder Wagg & Co. Ltd
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Roberts, R. (1992). ‘Standstill’, Depression and War 1931–45. In: Schroders. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09650-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09650-3_9
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