Dr Mark Geiger
Postdoctoral Fellow
Mark W. Geiger received his B.A. from Carleton College and his M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. Before starting graduate study in history at the University of Missouri (Ph.D., 2006) he held various positions in financial services. In 2007 his dissertation won the University of Missouri's Distinguished Dissertation Award and the Nevins Prize for best dissertation in North American economic history, awarded by the Economic History Association. In 2010 Yale University Press will publish his book, Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri's Civil War, 1861-1865, in the press's Series in Economic and Financial History. The book explores a previously unknown Civil War-era conspiracy that backfired on its participants, devastating Missouri's slaveholding elite and causing a revolution in land ownership. The book also describes the grassroots-level financing for the early stages of military mobilization in the Civil War, the greatest national effort undertaken to that time in the U.S.
Geiger's next book project is a history of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), the world's oldest futures exchange. CBOT remains largely unstudied, despite the organization's influence on world agricultural markets and the post-1973 development of financial services. The book will focus on how CBOT achieved market dominance; CBOT's innovations in finance, trading practices, and organization; and the culture and group psychology of the exchange. Besides presenting a detailed history of an important financial institution, the book will aim to offer a new perspective on the development of exchanges, one of the key institutions of capitalism.
We asked Dr Geiger about his book 'Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri's Civil War, 1861-1865'.
