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Book Details
Abstract
A History of Money looks at how money as we know it developed through time. Starting with the barter system, the basic function of exchanging goods evolved into a monetary system based on coins made up of precious metals and, from the 1500s onwards, financial systems were established through which money became intertwined with commerce and trade, to settle by the mid-1800s into a stable system based upon Gold. This book presents its closing argument that, since the collapse of the Gold Standard, the global monetary system has undergone constant crisis and evolution continuing into the present day.
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cover | Cover | ||
| Title | FM4 | ||
| Copyright | FM5 | ||
| Foreword | FM6 | ||
| Acknowledgements | FM10 | ||
| Contents | FM12 | ||
| Introduction | FM18 | ||
| 1. The Nature and Origins of Money and Barter | 1 | ||
| The importance of money | 1 | ||
| Sovereignty of monetary policy | 3 | ||
| Unprecedented inflation of population | 5 | ||
| Barter: as old as the hills | 10 | ||
| Persistence of gift exchange | 12 | ||
| Money: barter’s disputed paternity | 14 | ||
| Modern barter and countertrading | 19 | ||
| Modern retail barter | 23 | ||
| Primitive money: definitions and early development | 24 | ||
| Economic origins and functions | 28 | ||
| The quality-to-quantity pendulum: a metatheory of money | 31 | ||
| 2. From Primitive and Ancient Money to the Invention of Coinage, 3000–600 BC | 35 | ||
| Pre-metallic money | 35 | ||
| The ubiquitous cowrie | 37 | ||
| Fijian whales’ teeth and Yap stones | 38 | ||
| Wampum: the favourite American-Indian money | 41 | ||
| Cattle: man’s first working-capital asset | 43 | ||
| Pre-coinage metallic money | 46 | ||
| Money and banking in Mesopotamia | 49 | ||
| Girobanking in early Egypt | 53 | ||
| Coin and cash in early China | 57 | ||
| Coinage and the change from primitive to modern economies | 60 | ||
| The invention of coinage in Lydia and Ionian Greece | 63 | ||
| 3. The Development of Greek and Roman Money, 600 BD–AD 410 | 69 | ||
| The widening circulation of coins | 69 | ||
| Laurion silver and Athenian coinage | 71 | ||
| Greek and metic private bankers | 74 | ||
| The Attic money standard | 77 | ||
| Banking in Delos | 81 | ||
| Macedonian money and hegemony | 83 | ||
| The financial consequences of Alexander the Great | 85 | ||
| Money and the rise of Rome | 91 | ||
| Roman finance, Augustus to Aurelian, 14 BC–AD 275 | 97 | ||
| Diocletian and the world’s first budget, 284–305 | 103 | ||
| Finance from Constantine to the Fall of Rome | 110 | ||
| The nature of Graeco-Roman monetary expansion | 112 | ||
| 4. The Penny and the Pound in MedievalEuropean Money, 410–1485 | 117 | ||
| Early Celtic coinage | 117 | ||
| Money in the Dark Ages: its disappearance and re-emergence | 121 | ||
| The Canterbury, Sutton Hoo and Crondall finds | 122 | ||
| From sceattas and stycas to Offa’s silver penny | 127 | ||
| The Vikings and Anglo-Saxon recoinage cycles, 789–978 | 132 | ||
| Danegeld and heregeld, 978–1066 | 135 | ||
| The Norman Conquest and the Domesday Survey, 1066–1087 | 139 | ||
| The pound sterling to 1272 | 143 | ||
| Touchstones and trials of the Pyx | 148 | ||
| The Treasury and the tally | 152 | ||
| The Crusades: financial and fiscal effects | 158 | ||
| The Black Death and the Hundred Years War | 164 | ||
| Poll taxes and the Peasants’ Revolt | 172 | ||
| Money and credit at the end of the Middle Ages | 174 | ||
| 5. The Expansion of Trade andFinance, 1485–1640 | 181 | ||
| What was new in the new era? | 181 | ||
| Printing: a new alternative to minting | 183 | ||
| The rise and fall of the world’s first paper money | 186 | ||
| Bullion’s dearth and plenty | 189 | ||
| Potosi and the silver flood | 193 | ||
| Henry VII: fiscal strength and sound money, 1485–1509 | 196 | ||
| The dissolution of the monasteries | 199 | ||
| The Great Debasement | 203 | ||
| Recoinage and after: Gresham’s Law in action, 1560–1640 | 209 | ||
| The so-called price revolution of 1540–1640 | 218 | ||
| Usury: a just price for money | 224 | ||
| Bullionism and the quantity theory of money | 232 | ||
| Banking still foreign to Britain? | 241 | ||
| 6. The Birth and Early Growth of British Banking, 1640–1789 | 247 | ||
| Bank money supply first begins to exceed coinage | 247 | ||
| From the seizure of the mint to its mechanization, 1640–1672 | 249 | ||
| From the great recoinage to the death of Newton, 1696–1727 | 254 | ||
| The rise of the goldsmith-banker, 1633–1672 | 258 | ||
| Tally-money and the Stop of the Exchequer | 262 | ||
| Foundation and early years of the Bank of England | 265 | ||
| The national debt and the South Sea Bubble | 273 | ||
| Financial consequences of the Bubble Act | 277 | ||
| Financial developments in Scotland, 1695–1789 | 282 | ||
| The money supply and the constitution | 289 | ||
| 7. The Ascendancy of Sterling,1789–1914 | 295 | ||
| Gold versus paper . . . finding a successful compromise | 295 | ||
| Country banking and the industrial revolution to 1826 | 297 | ||
| Currency, the bullionists and the inconvertible pound, 1783–1826 | 304 | ||
| The Bank of England and the joint-stock banks, 1826–1850 | 316 | ||
| Amalgamation, limited liability and the end of unit banking | 328 | ||
| The rise of working-class financial institutions | 335 | ||
| The discount houses, the money market and the bill on London | 353 | ||
| The merchant banks, the capital market and overseas investment | 358 | ||
| The final triumph of the full gold standard, 1850–1914 | 369 | ||
| Gold reserves, tallies and the constitution | 378 | ||
| 8. British Monetary Developmentin the Twentieth Century | 381 | ||
| Introduction: a century of extremes | 381 | ||
| Financing the First World War, 1914–1918 | 383 | ||
| The abortive struggle for a new gold standard, 1918–1931 | 390 | ||
| Cheap money in recovery, war and reconstruction, 1931–1951 | 399 | ||
| Inflation and the integration of an expanding monetary system, 1951–2000 | 412 | ||
| The monetarist experiment, 1973–1990 | 438 | ||
| EMU: the end of the pound sterling? | 461 | ||
| The 2008 financial crisis and the evolution of the banking system in the twenty-first century | 476 | ||
| 9. American Monetary Developmentsince 1700 | 481 | ||
| Introduction: the economic basis of the dollar | 481 | ||
| Colonial money: the swing from dearth to excess, 1700–1775 | 482 | ||
| The official dollar and the growth of banking up to the Civil War,1775–1861 | 490 | ||
| From the Civil War to the founding of the ‘Fed’, 1861–1913 | 511 | ||
| The banks through boom and slump, 1914–1944 | 529 | ||
| Bretton Woods: vision and realization, 1944–1991 | 543 | ||
| American banks abroad | 550 | ||
| From accord to deregulation, 1951–1980 | 555 | ||
| Hazardous deposit insurance for thrifts, banks . . . and taxpayers | 561 | ||
| From unit banking . . . to balkanized banking | 565 | ||
| The great banking crisis of the twenty-first century | 572 | ||
| Reflating the economy? Greasing the wheels? Providing liquidity? The role of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve after 2008 and its effect on the US dollar | 577 | ||
| Summary and conclusion: from beads to banks without barriers | 579 | ||
| 10. Aspects of Monetary Development in Europe and Asia | 583 | ||
| Introduction: banking expertise shifts north and eastward | 583 | ||
| The rise of Dutch finance | 585 | ||
| Other early public banks | 589 | ||
| France’s hesitant banking progress | 591 | ||
| German monetary development: from insignificance to cornerstone of the EMS | 603 | ||
| The monetary development of Japan since 1868 | 619 | ||
| Stagnation and the limitations of monetary policy, 1990–2014 | 631 | ||
| The arrival of modern China, 1949 to 2014 | 634 | ||
| 11. Money and Debt in Developing Nations during the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries | 643 | ||
| Introduction: poverty in perspective | 643 | ||
| Stages in the drive for financial independence | 648 | ||
| Stage 1: Laissez-faire and the Currency Board System, c.1880–1931 | 650 | ||
| Stage 2: The sterling area and the sterling balances, 1931–1951 | 654 | ||
| Stage 3: Independence, planning euphoria and banking mania, 1951–1973 | 658 | ||
| Stage 4: Market realism and financial deepening, 1973–1993 | 664 | ||
| Debt and development: evolution of the crisis | 681 | ||
| The next step: the Asian financial crisis 1997 and twenty-first century debt relief for Africa and the developing world | 689 | ||
| Conclusion: reanchoring the runaway currencies | 695 | ||
| 12. Further towards a Global Currency 1990–2015 | 699 | ||
| The epoch-making euro | 699 | ||
| More coins in an increasingly cashless society | 711 | ||
| The paradox of coin: rising production – falling significance | 714 | ||
| Speculation and the Tobin Tax | 719 | ||
| Inflation redux | 727 | ||
| 13. Conclusion: The Role of Money in a Global Economy | 733 | ||
| Long-term swings in the quality/quantity pendulum | 734 | ||
| The military and developmental money-ratchets | 737 | ||
| Free trade in money in a global cashless society? | 741 | ||
| Independent multi-state central banking | 744 | ||
| Final thoughts: ‘Money is coined liberty’ | 748 | ||
| Bibliography | 755 | ||
| Index | 783 |