Bringing together cultural, economic and social historians from across Europe and beyond, this volume offers a consideration from a number of perspectives of the principal forces that further integrated the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe during the first century of industrialisation. The essays not only review and analyse the commercial, financial and monetary factors, negative as well as positive, that bore upon the region's initial stages of modern transformation, but also provide a ready introduction to major aspects the economy and society of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century.

Contents: Introduction, Philip L. Cottrell; Evolution of domestic borrowing in the Ottoman empire, Murat ÿizakça; From bimetallism to the 'limping gold standard': the Ottoman monetary system in the 19th century, Sevket Pamuk; Trading links: patterns of information and communication: the steamship and the modernization of East-West commerce, David M. Williams; Europe and the Ottoman empire in mid-19th century. Development of a bourgeoisie in the European mirror, ÿaglar Keyder; A survey of European investment in Turkey, 1854-1914. Banks and the finance of the state and railway construction, Philip L. Cottrell; A general survey of the history of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, André Autheman; State borrowing and the Imperial Ottoman Bank in the bankruptcy era (1863-1877), Christopher Clay; French investments in public and private funds in the Ottoman empire on the eve of the Great War, Jacques Thobie; The financial structure of the stock exchange in the late Ottoman empire, Zafer Toprak; Anatolian and Baghdad railways: investment and foreign policy before the Great War, Boris Barth; Bibliography; Index.

Philip L. Cottrell is Professor of Financial History at the University of Leicester, UK. Co-editors Monica Pohle Fraser and Iain I. Fraser are based at the European Association for Banking and Financial History, Frankfurt, Germany.