The lecture will discuss the usefulness of an historical approach of financial regulation, based on examples from 19th and 20th centuries financial history of various countries. As bank regulation has been widely discussed and is now commonly used in the literature, I will rather focus on financial markets regulation. This will include regulation concerning information (compulsory information, publication rules and practices), transactions and price-search mechanisms, investors' protection (selection, guarantees), etc. Thanks to in-depth analysis of specific examples, I will show the importance of observing actual practice rather than focusing on regulations alone.