Central banks maintain accounts for, and extend credit to, commercial banks and, in most instances, their sponsoring governments, but they generally do not do business with the public at large. Because they have the right to issue fiat money, most central banks serve as their nations’ (or, in the case of the European Central Bank, several nations’) only source of paper currency. The resulting monopoly of paper currency endows central banks with significant market influence as well as a certain revenue stream, which is known as seigniorage, after the lords or seigneurs of medieval France who enjoyed the privilege of minting their own coins. (See also droit du seigneur.)

Contemporary central banks manage a broad range of public responsibilities, the first and most familiar of which is the prevention of banking crises. This responsibility involves supplying additional cash reserves to commercial banks that risk failure due to extraordinary reserve losses. Other responsibilities include managing the growth of national money stocks (and, indirectly, fostering economic stability by preventing wide fluctuations in general price levels, interest rates, and exchange rates), regulating commercial banks, and serving as the sponsoring government’s fiscal agent—e.g., by purchasing government securities.

The concept of central banking can be traced to medieval public banks. In Barcelona the Taula de Canvi (Municipal Bank of Deposit) was established in 1401 for the safekeeping of city and private deposits, but it was also expected to help fund Barcelona’s government (particularly the financing of military expenses), which it did by receiving tax payments and issuing bonds—first for Barcelona’s municipal government and later for the larger Catalan government. The Taula was not permitted to lend to any other entity. During the 1460s, however, excessive demands for lending caused the Taula to suspend the convertibility of its deposits, and this led to its liquidation and reorganization.

The success of later public banks generally depended upon the extent to which their sponsoring governments valued long-term bank safety over loan flexibility. During the 17th and 18th centuries the Amsterdamsche Wisselbank was an especially successful example. The bank’s conservative lending policy allowed it to maintain reserves that fully covered its outstanding notes and thereby rendered it invulnerable even to the major panic provoked by Louis XIV’s unexpected invasion of the Netherlands in 1672. Although the Wisselbank had not been required to maintain 100 percent backing for its notes prior to 1802, its reserves shrank and its reputation suffered after it granted large-scale loans to the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch government.

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The Colonial Office in the Bank of England, unsigned watercolour by one of Sir John Soane’s draftsmen, c. 1818; in Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.

Courtesy of the trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum, London; photograph, R.B. Fleming

The Bank of England, founded in 1694 for the purpose of advancing £1.2 million to the British government to fund its war against France, eventually became the world’s most powerful and influential financial institution. It was the first public bank to assume most of the characteristics of modern central banks, including acceptance, by the late 19th century, of an official role in preserving the integrity of England’s banking and monetary system (as opposed to merely looking after its own profits). By 1800 the Bank of England had become the country’s only limited-liability joint-stock bank, its charter having denied other banks the right to issue banknotes (then an essential source of bank funding). Its size and prestige encouraged deposits from other banks and thereby streamlined the process of interbank debt settlement and confirmed the Bank of England’s status as the “bankers’ bank.”

There were cracks, however, in the Bank of England’s near-monopoly power. Although private banknotes had ceased to circulate in London by 1780, they survived in the provinces, where the Bank of England was prohibited from establishing branches. Following the Panic of 1825, a sharp economic downturn associated with a steep decline in commodities prices, dozens of county banks risked insolvency and failure. The government responded by rescinding the prohibition on joint-stock banking, though only for banks located at least 65 miles (105 km) from the centre of London. The same reform also allowed the Bank of England to set up provincial branches, but this last measure did not prevent the establishment of almost 100 joint-stock banks of issue between 1826 and 1836. The Bank of England’s monopoly was thus partially infringed. Two further measures, however, ultimately served to enhance its power, causing other banks to rely upon it as a source of currency for their routine needs as well as during emergencies. An 1833 act made Bank of England notes legal tender for sums above £5, which strengthened the tendency for the nation’s metallic reserves to concentrate in one place; and Peel’s Act of 1844 (formally known as the Bank Charter Act) in turn awarded the Bank of England an eventual monopoly of paper currency by fixing the maximum note issues of other banks at levels outstanding just prior to the act’s passage while requiring banks to give up their note-issuing privileges upon merging with or being absorbed by other banks.

In England the passage of Peel’s Act marked a practical victory for proponents of currency monopoly over those who favoured “free banking”—that is, a system in which all banks were equally free to issue redeemable paper notes. The free bankers maintained that Peel’s Act allowed the Bank of England to exercise an unhealthy influence upon the banking system and deprived other banks of the strength and flexibility they needed to tide themselves through financial crises. Proponents of currency monopoly, on the other hand, favoured having one bank alone bear ultimate responsibility both for preserving the long-term integrity of the currency and for preventing—or at least containing—financial crises. Although he himself favoured free banking, Walter Bagehot, then editor of The Economist magazine, played a key role in shaping the modern view of central banks as essential lenders of last resort. In the book Lombard Street (1873), he outlined the critical responsibilities of monopoly banks of issue (such as the Bank of England) during episodes of financial crises, and he emphasized the need for such banks to put the interests of the economy as a whole ahead of their own interests by keeping open lines of credit to other solvent but temporarily illiquid banks. These concepts of central banking led to the establishment of similar institutions in France, Germany, and elsewhere.

In the United States, state banking laws prohibiting branch banking and Civil War-era restrictions on note issuance rendered the banking system vulnerable to periodic crises. The crises eventually gave rise to a banking reform movement, the ultimate outcome of which was the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System.

After 1914 central banking spread rapidly to other parts of the world, and by the outbreak of World War II most countries had adopted it. The exceptions were the European colonies, which tended to rely on alternative currency arrangements. When they achieved independence after the war, however, most of them adopted central banking. After the 1970s several nations that had experienced recurring bouts of hyperinflation chose to abandon their central banking arrangements in favour of either modified currency-board-like systems or official “dollarization” (that is, the use of Federal Reserve dollars in lieu of their own distinct paper currency).

The worldwide spread of central banking during the 20th century coincided with the worldwide abandonment of metallic monetary systems, meaning that central banks effectively replaced gold and silver as the world’s ultimate sources of base money. Central banks are therefore responsible for supplying most of the world’s circulating paper currency, supplying commercial banks with cash reserves, and, indirectly, regulating the quantity of commercial bank deposits and loans.