In the discussion of our contemporary economic disease, the Great Depression analogy refuses to go away. Almost every policy-maker referred to conditions that had ‘not been seen since the Great Depression’, even before the failure of Lehman. Some even went further – the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England notably called the crisis the worst ‘financial crisis in human history’. In its April 2009 World Economic Outlook, the IMF looked explicitly at the analogy not only in the collapse of financial confidence, but also in the rapid decline of trade and industrial activity across the world. In general, history rather than economic theory seems to offer a guide in interpreting wildly surprising and inherently unpredictable events. Some observers, notably Paul Krugman, have concluded that a Dark Age of macroeconomics has set in.

We have reconstructed a new blue chips (large caps) stock index for France from 1854 to 1998, based on a modern methodology. Our index differs profoundly from earlier indices, and is more consistent with French financial and economic history. We suggest this result casts some doubt on many historical stock indices, such as those used in Dimson, Marsh and Staunton's Triumph of the Optimists. Investment in French stocks provided a positive real return during the nineteenth century, but a negative one – because of inflation and wars – in the twentieth. Despite this secular negative real performance, stocks proved the best financial asset in the very long run, although with an equity premium lower than in the US.

The French government currently honors a very unusual debt contract: an annuity that was issued in 1738 and currently yields €1.20 per year, payable to the descendants of its original recipient. I tell the story of this unique debt, which serves as an anecdotal but symbolic summary of French public finances since the eighteenth century. Created by a powerful nobleman for one of his servants, it survived the turmoil of the French Revolution, became part of the public debt and has been scrupulously honored to this day, even though its value has been eroded away by decades of inflation.

Based on archives of the French brokers, the French finance ministry and the occupying forces, this article analyses the motivations of the legal changes imposed on the French exchanges during the war. Most of the measures taken by the Vichy government were meant to stimulate the demand for French state bonds. Three main tools were used to render stocks as unattractive as possible: forced registration, imposition of a maximum threshold for stock prices and taxation. The article suggests that forced registration and the cap on maximum prices were the most efficient tools.

This article examines the formation, function and economics of unincorporated, or private, bankers' networks in long-distance payments during the 20 years leading up to the Civil War. Using historical evidence from both the center and the periphery, I find that the private bankers' networks played an important role in the interregional circulation of currency and in the issuance and clearing of deposits and drafts. In the 1850s, as the private bankers' networks were adapted to the mobilization of long-term financial capital, their role in long-distance payments began to diminish. This pattern of specialization was reinforced by the financing of the northern government's effort in the war of the states.

This brief survey gives an overview of the research on Japanese financial and monetary history based on the records of the Bank of Japan Archives. We briefly describe the Bank of Japan's organizational history, the activities of the Archives, their history and the classification of documents preserved in the Archives. We finally survey the recent research in Japanese economic history from the viewpoint of materials in the Archives.