I and James B. Greenberg have recently finished a two volume work on the history of western finance titled:
2017 Park, Thomas and James B. Greenberg. The Roots of Western Finance. Power, Ethics, and social capital in the ancient world. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. 2017/8 Greenberg, James B. and Thomas K. Park. Hidden interests in credit and finance: power, ethics, and social capital across the last millennium. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
The work focuses on the Mediterranean culture writ large - from the fertile crescent to the modern world with an historical coverage beginning in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt and ending with the 2008 global credit crisis. The argument uses a broad sociological and multicultural analysis to suggest that finance ineluctably involves inequalities not equalities and that ethics and transparencies are inesacapable social obligations that are only obscured by modern economic theory notions that finance involves an exchange of equal valued goods. Europe has had no monopoly on useful ideas. Classical Islamic finance introduced many ideas that could benefit modern finance includng a clear headed understanding of the benefits of financial transparency. Scholastic thought also added many valuable ethical considerations that could yet be used to improve modern financial systems. We further argue for a tensor theory of finance to push analysis toward a coherent understanding of the financial implications and complex inpacts of finance across the globe. The first book appeared in May 2017 and the second, incorporating an overall theoretical conclusion to the two books, is to appear either late Fall 2017 or early in 2018 (it is currently, August 2017, being copyedited and prepared for adding page numbers to the index).