Money, Currency and Crisis

Money is a core feature in all discussions of economic crisis, as is clear from the debates about the responses of the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States to the 2008 economic crisis. This volume explores the role of money in economic performance, and focuses on how monetary systems have affected economic crises for the last 4,000 years. Recent events have confirmed that money is only a useful tool in economic exchange if it is trusted, and this is a concept that this text explores in depth. The international panel of experts assembled here offers a long-range perspective, from ancient Assyria to modern societies in Europe, China and the US. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of economic history, and to anyone who seeks to understand the economic crises of recent decades, and place them in a wider historical context.

R.J. van der Spek is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Mediterranean and West-Asian History at the VU University (Vrije Universiteit) Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Bas van Leeuwen is Senior Researcher at Utrecht University and the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Introduction, R.J. van der Spek, Bas van Leeuwen, Introduction. Theory and method, Dennis Flynn, Economic Theory from/for Silver History, D.J. Bezemer, Unproductive Debt Causes Crisis: Connecting the History of Money to the Current Crisis, Jan Lucassen, Deep monetization in Eurasia ca. 1000-1950. Ancient economy, R.J. van der Spek, J.G. Dercksen, Michael Jursa, K. Kleber, Silver and Money in the Ancient Near East. J.A. Mooring, The emergence of coinage in the Greek world. R.J. van der Spek, Panos Iossif, Peter Foldvari and Bas van Leeuwen, Coin production and circulation in the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. A comparison with the European Union. K. Butcher, Monetary Policy in the Roman Empire. Pre-modern Europe, Nick Mayhew, Money in England from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Jaco Zuijderduijn, Incentives and interests. onetary policy, public debt and default in Holland, c. 1466-1489. Oscar Gelderblom and Joost Jonker, Smoothing the flow: currency circulation and payment techniques in the Low Countries, 1500-1800. Pre-modern China, Richard von Glahn, The Institutionalization of Paper Money in Song-Yuan China, Bas van Leeuwen and Y. Xu, China: flows of silver and economic crises from the Ming until the Qing dynasty (1368-1912). Twentieth century, Juan Castaneda and Pedro Schwartz, Confronting financial crises under different monetary regimes: Spain in the Great Depression years. Alessandro Roselli, Money: the Long Twentieth Century. Hans Schenk, Economic crises and monetary policy: institutions. Conclusion R.J. van der Spek and Bas van Leeuwen. Conclusion.