Roman Imperial Central Bank

Lets take care of the easy part: what would happen. I think that, if the Romans had a central bank, you'd see a massive development of the Empire, spread out across a wide range of areas and industries. Great fun for us to imagine. With a Central Bank facilitating the flow of capital, there's little limit to what the Romans could do (well, expanding much beyond their historical maximum borders would still be tricky, but you get the point). A Central Bank is also a nice little stabilizing feature of a society - if your elite and merchants have literally bought into the system, they're going to be far more loyal to the system.

So, the hard part: how do we get there? There was actually a relatively recent thread on this topic for Athens:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...anies-in-ancient-athens-were-realized.422341/

And it seems that Xenophon had a similar idea. Great! Culturally, it would make sense that this idea popped up in Athens, rather than far less mercantile-minded Rome (at least, as the Romans liked to think of themselves - in reality, they were no less mercantile, even if they weren't as comfortable with it as the Athenians). However, I think the Roman Empire in particular has one key advantage over Athens and the Roman Republic: The fiscus, the personal treasury of the Emperor.

In one sense, the Principate can be said to operate under the basic principle that the Emperor is simply the guy in charge of the biggest fortune in the Roman world, so he can afford to do whatever he wants. After all, technically, all of Egypt was really just the private country estate of the Emperors for centuries. So, the Emperor had lots of capital, lots of collateral, and could easily (from a financial perspective) set up a bank (run by freedmen, of course) to operate as an Imperial Bank, even without taking into consideration the actual government revenues. And, of course, if the Emperor is involved, you know that nobody is going to stiff the bank.

So, what do you think? Could a particularly innovative, farsighted, or crazy Emperor (the Romans had a few of each!) have done this? Or, to take an entirely different tack, what about the Republic doing something like this? The state had plenty of public land it could use; I just had an idea of the Gracchi using Pergamum as the source of income to start up a bank to fund some project (maybe investing in land reclamation?). Gotta run, but there's loads more to think about!
 
I like this idea a lot. I've been drafting something like this.

The way I see it is you need a recognition of a need - what problem does a central bank provide a solution for? Typically they control the issuing of money, as well as control over state finances.

I'd argue to a point that the Fiscus and its successors had similar features to the central bank (depending on your interpretation of the term.)

Ancient Egypt apparently had the shat linked to gold, which is a long precedent the Emperors could draw on.

Personally, I think you're looking at someone wanting to establish control over bullion and prevent it leaking to the far east. As a result, you need something else to act as currency, be it an alloy coin, or paper money. I've been drafting an 'accidental' development of paper money via soldier payments, but thats very late in the day. An option is possibly different types of iron or iron-alloy coins, linked to gold. The key is the coins have to be very high quality to prevent forgeries from a much harder, but more common metal - so you have the benefit of the Emperor setting up a central bank that would issue the coins for gold, to the highest quality for the time.

Personally, I'd go with paper money - it has the same issue as IOTL, but I think that might be a push unless we're looking at later periods with China as a precedent. (I personally have no issue with the Romans inventing it, but I can't recall when paper was developed in Europe.)

Next you somehow have to combine the concept of the Fiscus, and this Mint. Personally I think that if you've had iron or paper money for a while, then this merger could easily take place under a fiscally clever, cash-poor, but savvy Emperor. In exchange for holding the Emperors Gold, or the Fiscus itself, the Imperial Bank could lend against the Emperors bullion. A cunning plan (for the time) could even be to have the an element Jewry suggest it to the Emperor as a way to increase revenues, and to provide them with some security and safety in the Empire. Instead of holding the gold, the Imperial Bank RENTS the gold from the Emperor, and anyone else who stores it. (My understanding of usury as a phenomenon in Christian Rome is weak at best).
 
Top