4 AUGUST 1928, Page 23

The development of international finance in the sixteenth century, primarily

to aid European potentates in carrying on wars, is a subject of great interest and importance. Dr. Richard Ehrenberg's Capital and Finance in the Age of the Renaissance (Jonathan Cape, 21s.), translated by H. M. Lucas, contains much information, especially regard- ing the great Augsburg house of the Fuggcrs, whose archives have been thoroughly sifted of late years by German and Austrian scholars. But it must be said that Dr. Ehrenberg's cumbrous style and excessive love of minute detail will deter all but the most enthusiastic of economic students from profiting by his instructive researches.

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