There could have been no more an auspicious start to the European Association for Banking History's annual conference in Athens recently than the announcement that Wim Dusinebreg, who has been at the core of central bank evolution in Europe since at least 1973 and was, up to a few months ago, the first president of the European Central Bank, had become chairman of EABH.
Duisenberg takes over from Sir Evelyn de Rothschild who had been at the helm of EABH since its foundation in November 1990.
In his inaugural address to the Conference Dr Duisenberg emphasised the responsibility which bankers and historians have as custodians of all that has happened, and will be happening, along the way as markets and institutions restructure and coalesce in the EU.
The annals of debates, events, and incidents, must be retained in as comprehensive and structured a manner as possible. And as an example he cited how, within the context of French traditional cultural reticence towards central bank independence, an almost two hour discussion with Prime Minister Jospin which he once had, aimed at convincing - which he resisted - Duisenberg to at that point loosen interest rates, only got as far as a "You have to understand that the ECB obviously accepts central bank independence, the Banque de France does so too, but it is not part of French culture!".
Even truths like this, EU banking historians must record and treasure in their annals, he opined.
Two further developments in EABH were the change in its name to include Financial History, and the retirement of the much loved Dutchman Wim Vanthoor of Nederlandsche Bank who too had been on the EABH's board since its start.
135 banking historians from leading banks and academic institutions in Europe participated in this year's conference, on the theme of the Human Factor in Banking. The universities of Berkeley, Vancouver, Florida, Columbia, and Tokyo were also represented.
Over an intensive two days of work in the Athens Hilton no fewer than 15 papers were presented and discussed, and the high quality of research was only equalled by the innovative provocativeness of some of the concepts proposed to several traditional banking historiographic approaches.
The historical approach is essential not only to explain the variance of financial structures across countries, but also to understand the nature of banks as socially-constructed, and historically-specific, institutions, where personalities and functions and performance are dramatically shaped by social structures, cultural environments, and legal and political setups.
Papers presented at this conference by leading contemporary financial historians, like Stefano Battilossi (Universidad Carlos III Madrid) and Gerald G. Feldman (California University, Berkeley), brought to the fore that there is a banking history that has been easy to historicise, but at the same time there is a new as yet uncovered banking reality that has not yet been examined in detail.
Revered themes (e.g. the claimed effectiveness of Austro-Germanic universal banking, the claimed US-generated birth of the approach to banking as "an industry", broad opaqueness that covers up problems of corporate governance) are now being dug into by banking historians, who produce accounts that increasingly show a fuller reality, warts and all.
Gabriel Tortilla's (University of Alcata, Madrid) account from riches to rags to riches in one generation (Management and Mismanagement in the Early Years of the Banco Central de Madrid [1920-1945]) was an example in point.
Several papers showed that, while much of the empirical investigation continues to be driven by normal financial theory (e.g. the finance-growth nexus), at the same time the new banking history which is emerging within the very cliometricised stream of current research points at outstanding individuals or mileux that dominate in the ephors of market economics, bringing projects into the realms of the possible.
But Terence Gourvish of the London School of Economics wisely pointed out (with the project financing annals covering the Channel Tunnel as his main example) that archival material on financial consortia needs to be treated with much more respect, openness, and availability.
Leslie Hannah's (University of Tokyo) treatment of "The 20th Century Transformation of Banking and its Effect on Management Training for Bankers" asked some important questions.
What real contributions have academic institutions made over time to the formation of bankers? What do banks want from business schools these days? He drew a parallel between the fact that, up to the 18th century, most of what bankers did was not much different to what merchants did, and the post-1990 shift towards capital intensity at the expense of labour intensity in the profession.
Youssif Cassis (Universitè P.M. France Grenoble II) - "The Establishment of Banks" - warned against the approach towards definition of the establishment of banks as being a new institution's foundation. "Not all banks have been created as banks", and consider also mergers between equals, establishments of subsidiaries, and re-establishment of failed banks, as examples, he insisted.
At all EABH conferences - this was the third that I attended - the contributions by bank archivists are priceless.
Edwin Green and Sara Kinsey, who manage the Group Archives of HSBC Holdings plc in London, Francesa Pino Head Archivist at Banca Commerciale Italiana (now Banca Intesa), and Roger Nugaret Archivist of Credit Lyonnais, all presented work that reminded us of famous dicta.
Henri Germain used to say that "Business is people, not just figures". Barclays's Anthony F. Tuke echoed him in those days with "Banking is about humans, not money", and the famous Marc Bloch would hold that "the great historian resembles the Ogre of the legend... where he smells human flesh, he knows that it is his game".
The lives of expatriate wives and families in the history of HSBC, the values of bank structure charts, and archives' policies towards personnel records, were the extremely absorbing themes of these archivists' studies.
The most contentious position taken at this conference was that by Mira Wilkins, from the Department of Economics of Florida International University.
The case she made was for doing away with the distinctions between business history, banking history, and economic history. She asked whether these are "disjunctive sets?"; but it is precisely because her inspirational basis kicks off from Rondo Cameron and V.I. Bovykin's 1991 book on international banking that I did not share her enthusiasm for getting rid of the distinction.
The priceless treasures of specialised research in banking and financial history that have been produced since then by academics from all over the world, have not only moved far ahead and beyond the Cameron-Bovykin position, but have inevitably both presented the specialisation's reality as well as made banking (and now financial) historians tackle with seriousness and enthusiasm precisely the specific definitional problem (something which I also hope to do in my coming book on Maltese banking history).
Workshops, colloquia, and general conferences have now been held regularly by EABH in all major European cities since 1993. Some 80 leading European banks and central banks, plus leading bankers and historians, are members of the association.
This year, as fitting, it was the turn of Olympic Athens to play host, and the hospitality of Alpha Bank was outstanding, even as some important parts of central Athens suggest they are cutting it really fine to be ready for the big event.
Mr Consiglio, who lectures on Banking in the EU in the European Documentation and Research Centre of the University of Malta, acknowledges with thanks the assistance of MIC which made attendance at this Conference possible.