How Fake History about Jews and the Evolution of European Finance Helped Create Modern Anti-Semitism

According to a highly influential 17th-century French manual of commerce, Jews were responsible for inventing bills of exchange—complex financial instruments, somewhere between money orders and checks, that were essential for international trade in the days before the telegraph and modern banking. While Jews did not, in fact, invent bills of exchange, the story found in this manual was repeated countless times over the centuries. Francesca Trivellato explains how the perceived link between Jews and the development of European commerce illuminates the connections between medieval and modern anti-Semitism. (Interview by Nachi Weinstein. Audio, 69 minutes.)