| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 277 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
The initial transformation : from monetary heterogeneity to territorial currencies -- Two structural preconditions : nation-states and industrial technology -- Making markets : transaction costs and monetary reform -- Multiple macroeconomic and fiscal motivations -- National identities and territorial currencies -- Two nineteenth-century challenges : currency unions and free banking -- The coming of age of territorial currencies in the interwar years -- The monetary dimensions of imperialism : colonial currency reforms -- The final wave : post-1945 macroeconomic activism and southern reforms -- The current challenge to territorial currencies |
| Summary |
Why should each country have its own exclusive currency? Eric Helleiner offers a fascinating and unique perspective on this question in his accessible history of the origins of national money. Our contemporary understandings of national currency are, Helleiner shows, surprisingly recent. Based on standardized technologies of production and extraction, territorially exclusive national currencies emerged for the first time only during the nineteenth century. This major change involved a narrow definition of legal tender and the exclusion of tokens of value issued outside the national territory. "Territorial currencies" rapidly became bound up with the rise of national markets, and money reflected basic questions of national identity and self-presentation: In what way should money be managed to serve national goals? Whose pictures should go on the banknotes? Helleiner draws out the potent implications of this largely unknown history for today's context. Territorial currencies face challenges from many monetary innovations-the creation of the euro, dollarization, the spread of local currencies, and the prospect of privately issued electronic currencies. While these challenges are dramatic, the author argues that their significance should not be overstated. Even in their short historical life, territorial currencies have never been as dominant as conventional wisdom suggests. The future of this kind of currency, Helleiner contends, depends on political struggles across the globe, struggles that echo those at the birth of national money. -- Publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-269) and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Money.
|
|
Money -- Political aspects
|
|
Currency question.
|
|
HISTORY -- Modern -- 19th Century.
|
|
Currency question
|
|
Money
|
|
Money -- Political aspects
|
|
Nationalstaat
|
|
Währung
|
|
Geschichte
|
|
Geldwezen.
|
|
Nationale aspecten.
|
|
Territorium.
|
|
Histoire.
|
|
19e siècle.
|
|
Question monétaire.
|
|
Monnaie.
|
|
Aspect politique.
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9781501720727 |
|
1501720724 |
|
0801440491 |
|
9780801440496 |
|
