🌊 Ripple · counterfactual
What if the Bank of England is founded had gone differently?
1694 · britain
A permanent national debt and a central bank make long-term state and private borrowing cheap.
If it had gone differently: Capital stays scarce and expensive; there is no deep pool of credit for canals, mines and mills.
What it made possible
Later turning points that leaned on the Bank of England is founded. Change it in the game and the ripples reach all of these.
- 1780The Industrial Revolution. Without it, Growth stays flat and Malthusian; most people alive in 1900 live about as their great-grandparents did.
- 1870The first globalisation. Without it, The world economy stays a patchwork of regions; no belle-époque boom, and no 1914 shock when it unwinds.
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