Money in the Pre-Industrial World:

Bullion, Debasements and Coin Substitutes

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Editor: John H Munro

Financial History

The papers in this edited volume discuss key historical elements of ‘monetarism’, including coins and moneys of account, the role of bullion and case studies of substitute moneys. The debasement of coinage is fundamental to any study of this kind and is explored within ancient, medieval and early modern contexts across Europe, Asia and the Americas. This comparative approach demonstrates that an understanding of money is fundamental for an understanding of economics and economic history.

Sample pages

• Introduction
• Index

Readership

Economic and Financial History, Numismatics

Contents

Introduction – John H Munro
1 The Technology and Economics of Coinage Debasements in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: with Special Reference to the Low Countries and England – John H Munro
2 From Aurelian to Diocletian: Financing Imperial Recovery by Coinage Debasements and Fiduciary Currencies – Kenneth W Harl
3 The Making of a Gold Standard: The Ducat and its Offspring, 1284–2001 – Alan Stahl
4 Debasement of the Coinage and its Effects on Exchange Rates and the Economy: in England in the 1540s, and in the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands in the 1480s – Peter Spufford
5 The Amsterdam Wisselbank's Innovations in the Monetary Sphere: The Role of 'Bank Money' – Herman Van der Wee
6 Silver in England, 1600–1800: Coinage Outputs and Bullion Exports from the Records of the London Tower Mint and the London Company of Goldsmiths – Nicholas J Mayhew
7 The Burdens of Tradition: Debasements, Coinage Circulation and Mercantilist Public Policy Debates in Seventeenth-Century Aragon – José Antonio Mateos Royo
8 Money or Export Commodity for Asia? American Silver in the Markets of Mexico, Castile and Amsterdam from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century – Renate Pieper
9 Cacao Beans in Colonial México: Small Change in a Global Economy – Arturo Giraldez
10 Precious Metals, Debasements and Cowrie Shells in the Medieval Indian Monetary Systems, c.1200–1575 – John S Deyell

Reviews

'John Munro is the ultimate authority for economists worried about the debasement puzzle, or how to compare prices from Roman times to the present or across the world from India to Mexico. Here he presents authorities who cover a wide range of early solutions to the “big problem of small change.” '
Larry Neal, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Related titles

• Argentina's Parallel Currency: The Economy of the Poor
• Government Debts and Financial Markets in Europe
• Markets and Growth in Early Modern Europe
• The Political Economy of Sentiment: Paper Credit and the Scottish Enlightenment in Early Republic Boston, 1780–1820
• Taxation and Debt in the Early Modern City
• The Case for Gold
• The Foundations of Monetary Economics
• The History of Gold and Silver
• The Monetary History of Gold: A Documentary History, 1660–1999

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