Have you ever observed the technologically advanced world around us and wondered who brought us up here? Who were these people and how they did it? From almost a kilometre tall skyscraper in Dubai to mere electronic toothbrushes we use to clean our teeth, everything amazes me to such an extent that I went ahead to look for the gentlemen who provided us with all these brilliant inventions. Apparently, it’s the scientists and engineers that take all the credit of making us the most advanced generation of history. But the ancient periods also had brilliant scientists and engineers, why weren’t they able to come up with such inventions? I understand that every invention supports creating another invention and ancient scientists could not have suddenly come up with a rocket to land on moon. Only after a series of inventions we came to a point where we were able to explore space. But have a look at scientific advancements graph below.
If you study the graph closely, you will notice that all through history we had a steady increase in scientific advancements until 16th century. But after the 16th century, there can be seen an abrupt rise in our scientific achievements. What explains this sudden rise? What really happen during 16th century that boosted our pace towards an advanced world?
By going through the books of history and observing current times closely, I figured out there is one profession that was missing in the ancient times which has recently played a very important role in helping us achieve rapid technological advancements. They are the bankers! Not the one you meet when visiting your nearest bank, but the people who have developed the modern financial systems by evolving money from precious metals to paper notes and now to numbers in your bank statements.
Success of scientists and engineers depends on amount of research they are able to carry out and number of times they are allowed to fail and try again. All of this requires tons of money. In 2010, a trillion dollars were spent on research and development. Never did the world had this much money for R&D before. Money has been the root of most progress. Every breakthrough in finance in last 3–4 centuries was later translated into breakthroughs in technology and science. It is undeniable that financial innovation has been an indispensable factor in man’s advance from miserable living conditions to the heights of material prosperity that so many people know today.
But the question is what did these men called bankers did to make so much money available for R&D? In rest of this series, I will walk you through the 400 years of financial history and how bankers influenced some very important historical events that made us what we are today.
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Originally published at haq.life, Financial Innovations series is an essay divided in 7 parts which should be read in sequence for better understanding. Click on the links below to navigate to other parts of this series:
Table of Contents
