The Ascent of Money (Abridged)

Reviewed by Diario de un Inversor · UpdatedJune 13, 2026

Our review

Niall Ferguson, Harvard historian and prolific author of popular history and economics, published «The Ascent of Money» in 2008 — a panoramic history of the evolution of money and finance from Sumerian civilisation to the 2008 global financial crisis. This condensed edition distils the book's central arguments into a more accessible format. Ferguson's thesis is provocative and an antidote to popular cynicism: finance is not the parasite of the real economy but its precondition. Without the development of banking, public debt, stock markets, insurance, and derivatives, modern economic growth would have been impossible. Ferguson traces the great milestones of financial history — 15th-century Florentine banking, the creation of the Bank of England, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the South Sea Company, 19th-century investment banking, Bretton Woods — with the narrative skill of a historian who understands that a good story sells better than abstract theory. The critique: the synthesis sacrifices nuance, and in some chapters the argument is subordinated to anecdote. Ferguson is also a polemicist with pronounced ideological positions that occasionally colour the analysis.

Key takeaways

• Finance is not the enemy of the real economy but its infrastructure — without credit, insurance, and capital markets, modern economic activity would not exist in its current form.
• Financial crises are inherent to the development of the financial system, not avoidable accidents: each financial innovation creates new forms of systemic risk.
• Financial history reveals that institutions that seem inevitable today — central banks, stock exchanges, insurance — were contingent innovations with specific historical origins.
• Public debt was historically the mechanism that allowed states to finance wars and build empires; its management is as political as it is economic.

Fact

The documentary series «The Ascent of Money», in which Ferguson presented the book's ideas, aired on Channel 4 in the UK and PBS in the US in 2008, and won the International Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2009.