The Ascent of Money
book by Niall Ferguson
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World is a 2008 book by then-Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, and an adapted television documentary for Channel 4 (UK) and PBS (US), which in 2009 won an International Emmy Award. It examines the long history of money, credit, and banking.
Book
The book deals with the rise of money as a trade form, and tracks its progression, development, and effects on society into the 21st Century. It also covers the importance of financial systems and the role they have played throughout historical events. In total there are six chapters covering various financial events along with an introduction and an afterword note included at the end. Each chapter covers a different aspect of the financial system.
Chapter one depicts the journey of Francisco Pizarro, a Spanish explorer, as an example of the establishment of gold and silver being used as currency. It also discusses the beginning of lending, or credit, and finally moving on to the foundational pieces of modern banking through the story of the Bank of England in the 19th century.
Chapter two discusses the bond market, focusing primarily on Italy during the Renaissance and their increased usage of the bond market, as well as the development of the Rothschild family's wealth in the 19th century.
Chapter three focuses on the stock market and the occurrence of bubbles.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7714645. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Ascent of Money” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.