How did Early Empires facilitate the Rise of Investment Banking

We often take our economic and larger social system in the West as something given or that can be accepted without much questioning with regards to its origin or how it came about. One area that is so vital for the modern world is banking, including investment, we often associated with buying and selling of stocks and securities, and loans. However, this system developed over thousands of years and the first traces of investing in trade, what effectively were family-run business, and forms of investment banking appear in the ancient Near East.

Bronze Age Investments

Investments and trade have an early historical root in the ancient Near East. Perhaps one of the earliest examples of long-distance trade and banking occurred in Anatolia, modern day Turkey, sometime slightly before 2000 BC and lasted for nearly 200 years. This is seen in the ancient city of Kaneš, or modern Kültepe, an archaeological site in central Turkey. This ancient city was known to have been a major trading hub for the region that had a group of Assyrian settlers from the ancient city of Aššur who had settled in the area (Figure 1). These Assyrians created one of the earliest well-documented forms of private trade we know of. These early traders created an amicable relationship with the local population, whereby textiles brought from Assyria, located in modern northern Iraq, were traded for silver, copper, and tin. The trade colonies at Kaneš and other nearby towns were often not only conducted by private individuals and households, but they also were opportunities for people to invest in. For instance, texts show that trade caravans were invested by individuals before they set out on journeys. While rich profits are shown in these trade transactions, they also came at a high cost, as there was a threat that caravans would be attacked and prices were often relatively high. Trade also involved direct transactions of commodities, such as silver and textiles, to be traded for the other. In essence, more abstract forms of business, such as the concept of money, were not yet developed.

Such trade, however, characterized the Bronze Age (3000-1200 BC), which was a period of many small states or empires that were ephemeral or short-lived, with numerous conflicts between states. In essence, there was relatively high political instability in the Near East, which caused the trade to be somewhat confined in geographic scope and relatively expensive.

Provinces of the Achemenid

New Empires and Banking

This changed during the rise of major empires starting in the 8th century BC. With the rise of the Assyrian Empire (911-609 BC), the so-called Neo-Assyrians, and the subsequent rise of the Neo-Babylonian (626-539 BC) and Persian (or Achaemenid (c. 550-330 BC) empires, we begin to see patterns were there were much larger states encompassing much of the region. These larger states also replaced other large states, enabling much greater stability in the region and more unity between cultural groups.

The best-known early banking family was the Murashu family, although others existed such as the Egibi family, which thrived in the 5th century BC. They had established perhaps one of the world’s named firms, in essence “Murashu and Sons.” They had over 60 employees stationed in various cities across southern Mesopotamia and Elam in modern Southern Iraq and Southwest Iran respectively. The employees functioned similarly to local branch offices of the main Murashu firm. The company dealt with financing real estate, loans, and investing in agricultural projects. In addition, both poor citizens and the royal family appeared to do business with this family.

In the meantime, long-distance trade connecting Europe, the Near East, and India begins to flourish at around the time of the Achaemenid Empire and later. This is made possible by the fact the Near East, in its totality, was unified into one single entity that spanned from Egypt to Anatolia and to the east in Turkmenistan and from the Caucuses to Saudi Arabia in the south (Figure 2).

For the next 2500 years after the initial rise of the Achaemenids, the Near East witnessed a succession of large states and empires, although most were not nearly as large as the Achaemendis. When Alexander the Great conquers the Persian Achaemenids in 333 BC, what is telling is how only a few states were created to cover all the land between Greece and India, Egypt, Arabia, the Caucusus, Iran, and Central Asia. In essence, much of this part of the world was now relatively united and trading actively.

By the time of the Parthian (247 BC – 224 CE) king, Mithradates II, we now know of a Near Eastern king to have established political and diplomatic relations with a Chinese emperor, to whom the Parthian king sent an ambassador. This act paved the way for the establishment of long-distance trade contacts with China and laid the basis for the Silk Road along which silk was traded from China up to the Mediterranean, crossing Parthian lands. A maritime route was also opened through the Indian Ocean, perhaps facilitated by extension of Parthian control over the western shores of the Persian Gulf, though this extension is suggested by some archaeological remains only.

Figure 2. The Achaemenid Empire near its peak. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthia#/media/File:Provinces_of_the_Achaemenid_empire.png).

The Role of Money and Coinage in the Economy

It was also at around the 6th century BC that coinage began to be used more substantially. The origin of coinage is somewhat in dispute but it could have begun in the Aegean or Western Anatolia, perhaps the kingdom of Lydia. What is critical, however, is not so much the invention of coinage but how it was used by the later empires. By the 5th century BC, coins in the Persian Achaemenid Empire began to be used in a standard form, called the daric (Figure 3), as decreed by Darius I. We now begin to see a standard way in which money began to flow across vast distances using a standard unit of currency.

Figure 3. The Persian daric (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_daric#/media/File:Achaemenid_coin_daric_420BC_front.jpg).

Coinage, therefore, was a convenient representation of that can be exchanged easily across vast areas under the aegis of a unifying state. This allowed money to flow at much greater quantities in later periods and made banking and investments a fixed feature of the economic landscape. In essence, capital in the form of coinage becomes of great utility with the rise of empires in the Near East, as it was able to flow across distances with far less hindrances from numerous political actors disrupting trade flow, such as that seen in the Bronze Age. This also allowed a range of commodities to be trade in far away regions, including silk from China arriving in the Near East and reaching Rome in the Roman Empire, all the while forms of investment banking beginning to flourish.

Conclusion

While we see in the early Bronze Age (3000-1200 BC) hints of what we would eventually call investment banking whereby individuals would invest and finance trade partnerships and attempt to reap handsome rewards, this form of investment only begins to develop more substantially with the rise of empires. The Achaemenids were the first great empire to utilize coinage, although the invention of coins may have occurred in the Aegean world. The key development, however, is that empires allowed the free flow of investments to occur, as we see with the Murashu family, one of history’s first true investment firms. They were able to establish branches of trade and finance banks in southern Mesopotamia and Elam thanks to the peace afforded by the Achaemenid Empire. Such patterns became well established during a long period of empires and continued to influence the region and Europe for centuries, creating the foundations of what today has become modern investment banking.