[...] This volume considers the bank s first quarter of a century, a period when the Ionian Islands, the centre of its operations, continued to be a British protectorate. These were tumultuous years caused by not only mounting Ionian opposition to the Islands foreign administration but also other unsettling forces. These were, first, the repeated unfavourable seasons and other adverse natural factors that had very serious continuing impacts upon raising the Islands export staples - currants and olive oil. Second, these disruptions were accompanied by Europe being subjected to destabilising commercial and financial crises in 1847 and 1857, and the adverse effects of the former economic breakdown were considerably aggravated by the revolutions that erupted across the continent during the ensuing year. As a result, the Islands only enjoyed relatively brief periods of prosperity over the mid-nineteenth century - during the mid-1840s, the opening years of 1850s and from the last years of that decade until Britain ceded the Islands to Greece in spring 1864. [...] (από τον πρόλογο του βιβλίου)