The Emergence of a National Capital Market in England, 1710–1880

Abstract

Was eighteenth-century London's financial market linked to domestic real capital markets? When did English capital markets cease to be regionally segmented? We compare London interest rates with annual registered property transactions in Middlesex and in West Yorkshire. This evidence, though tentative, suggests that London financial markets were weakly linked to local real capital markets in the mid-eighteenth century. By the late eighteenth century those links were strong. Regional markets were still segmented in the mid-eighteenth century but were integrated by the time of the Napoleonic War.