The Second Bank of the United States ─ entral?banker in an era of nation-building, 1816?836

The year 2016 will mark the 200^th anniversary of the founding of the Second Bank of the United States (1816-1836). It has been 100 years since a comprehensive history of the bank was published, and in the economic history literature that has developed since that time, the Bank has come to be seen, to greater or lesser degrees, as a central bank.

The idea of a central bank evolved historically through a process of learning by doing that took place after the Second Bank’s demise.This comprehensive new history of the Bank argues that whilst it has been useful to take lessons from the performance of the Second Bank and other early central banks, this agenda limits our perspective in fully understanding the wider context in which the Second Bank operated. In particular, Jane Knodell argues that its establishment was part of a larger, nation-building agenda.

This book will show how the Second Bank came to place itself at the monetary centre of this project, as it performed its dual roles as the US government’s bank and the only commercial bank operating on a national scale. The Bank provided monetary services to overcome the illiquidity created by the general scarcity of specie, by the seasonality of agricultural production, and by distance to two primary clients: the US government, which chartered the bank and granted it special privileges, and merchants involved in domestic and international long-distance trade. The Bank’s branch network was a vital asset in this regard, and this book is the first to offer any real empirical or institutional analysis of how this network worked. The literature’s focus on the central-banking characteristics of the Bank, conceived in 20^th-century terms, has diverted research attention away from the spatial aspects of the Second Bank’s operations, and it is this lacuna that the book seeks to address.

Jane Knodell is Full Professor of Economics at the University of Vermont, USA