Thomas Rowlandson, The Bank (London, 1792), showing a view of the Rotunda.
© The Trustees of the British Museum.
Industrialisation was not the only driver of change during the eighteenth century. Recent historiography has revealed more about the financial and organisational revolutions that helped to shape the British state and the country’s economic development. The Bank of England was at the forefront of these revolutions and a pioneer of new modes of business organisation. A business that started out in a small rented space with only seventeen clerks in 1694 was, by 1815, employing nearly 1,000 workers and occupying most of the Threadneedle Street block. Yet it has been sadly neglected as a case study. What might we find in the Bank’s archives to understand how business adapted to rapid and radical change during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Click here to read more: https://bankunderground.co.uk/2018/11/07/how-did-organisations-adapt-to-change-in-the-18th-and-19th-century-lessons-from-the-bank-of-england-archives/
Professor Anne L. Murphy 