This section follows the history of the first reserve currencies and focuses on the emergence of central banks and the banking technologies of the time.

As early as the 13th century, Italians (Florence, Genoa, Venice...) developed double-entry accounting techniques. Later, Antwerp (16th c.) became Northern Europe's leading financial center, a role that was later taken over by Amsterdam, thanks to the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (1609), where VOC shares were traded.

Antwerp hosted merchant fairs where traders frequently gathered to settle debts, leading to the invention of new financial instruments. The bill below, dated 1761 and more recent, is a promissory note. It features handwritten details, along with inscriptions on the back, making it a magnificent artifact from that period.

This effervescence led to the creation of more sophisticated banking institutions. Lombard bankers and later Dutch merchants perfected credit instruments (bills of exchange, promissory bills, etc.). The modern banking system is based on this idea: money can be scriptural money, not just metal.

This brings us back to the fundamental question of the origins of money: does money emanate from a commodity that emerges from the need to exchange, or does it emerge from credit?

Sweden was a pioneer in central banking: in 1657, Johan Palmstruch created the Stockholm Banco, authorized to lend more than its metal reserves, thus marking the birth of fractional reserve banking. But excessive banknote issuance led to panic and a run on the bank in 1663.

In 1668, Riksens Ständers Bank, the world's first true central bank, was founded in Stockholm. However, it too suffered from crises (1709, 1715...) linked to the abuse of banknotes, often to finance the kingdom's wars.

In France, John Law, a Scotsman, persuaded the Regent (Duke of Orleans) to create a private bank, the Banque Générale (1716), authorized to issue paper against gold, silver, and government debts. It became the Banque Royale (1718), and helped the Mississippi Company's shares soar.

When reality caught up with speculation, the panic was exacerbated by the decision to ban the holding of gold and force the use of Law's notes.

Finally, the bubble burst in 1720, causing a collapse that ruined the credibility of paper money in France for a long time to come.

In Amsterdam in 1609, the Bank of Amsterdam (Wisselbank) seized control of coin custody and convertibility in Amsterdam. It prohibited the circulation of private banknotes and enforced the deposit of metallic coins in its vaults. The bank gradually wrested control of the currency by forbidding moneychangers to keep coins overnight, mandating that they be deposited in the Bank of Amsterdam's vaults at the end of each day. As mentioned earlier, it was not necessarily metal coins that were used in international trade, but rather scriptural money recorded on the bank's books.

Thanks to Dutch merchant power, the bank played the role of the first de facto "central bank", stabilizing world trade. Over time, however, it granted unsecured loans to the VOC and eventually ran out of metal to back its bills. In 1790, it emerged that it had lent large sums to the VOC, and virtually declared bankruptcy, ruining the credibility of the gulden.

In 17th-century England, gold and silver were stored by goldsmiths, who issued receipts. This partially decentralized organization proved its limits when the Crown found itself in massive need of financing for the war against France.

In 1694, the Bank of England (BoE) was founded. So, how was the Bank of England born? It came out of a rather desperate partnership between the London business community and a government that was, frankly, desperate to find funds for its war against France.

The Bank obtained a monopoly on banknote issuance in England (reinforced in 1708, 1742, etc.). From then on, paper money backed by gold reserves circulated alongside coins. This development is a key step in understanding the gradual takeover of money by state institutions. First, the Bank of Amsterdam prevented moneychangers from keeping coins and forced them to return them to the Bank. In England, private banks were prohibited from issuing their own bills redeemable in gold.

They did allow private banks to issue banknotes, but these could only be exchanged for Bank of England bills.

Bank of England bills, pounds sterling, were redeemable in gold. This added a third layer to the currency. So we have gold at the base, then Bank of England bills, and then private bank bills on top. Before that, private banks could issue their own bills redeemable in gold. This is another stage in the gradual takeover of currency by state institutions.

The Bank financed the State with vast loans and structured the huge public debt that financed the economic boom.

This model was consolidated over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, to the point where the pound became the world's reserve currency, under the seal of the Bank of England and the gold standard.

The world's reserve currencies have followed one another over the centuries, driven by the economic, commercial, and military power of a state or empire: Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, then Great Britain, before the United States came to dominate in the 20th century. In each case, we see a similar cycle: economic expansion, commercial success, international adoption of currency, indebtedness, costly wars, abusive use of money creation or credit, and finally decline.

The emergence of central banks was a gradual process. These institutions often arose in the context of costly wars, enabling the state to finance itself through debt. When the gold standard was adopted (England, 17th-19th centuries), it provided a veneer of stability, until the great world wars of the 20th century led to the gradual abandonment of gold convertibility. The power to mint money thus shifted from the royal monopoly to more complex entities, first private (goldsmiths, bankers), then semi-public (central banks), reflecting the evolution of monetary sovereignty towards institutionalized, globalized forms.

This process illustrates the shift described earlier: the burden of sovereign debt was increasingly transferred to central banks or legal institutions like Parliament, which were granted the power to create money.

The most significant outcome of this evolution is that the system moved from a debt that could be extinguished by a sovereign's bankruptcy to a debt that rested primarily on the shoulders of the population.