Produced by Jason Isbell, Brendan Lane and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE HISTORY OF CURRENCY 1252 TO 1896 BY W.A. SHAW [1896] Reprints of Economic Classics Augustus M. Kelley Publishers NEW YORK 1967 First Edition 1895 (London: Wilsons & Milne, 29 Paternoster Row, 1895) Reprinted 1967 by AUGUSTUS M. KELLEY PUBLISHERS From Second Edition of 1896 Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 67-20086 Printed in the United States of America by Sentry Press, New York, N.Y. 10019 THE HISTORY OF CURRENCY 1252 TO 1894 Being an Account of the Gold and Silver Moneys and Monetary Standards of Europe and America, together with an Examination of the effects of Currency and Exchange Phenomena on Commercial and National Progress and Well-being BY W.A. SHAW, M.A. LATE BERKELEY FELLOW OF THE OWENS COLLEGE FELLOW OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL AND ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETIES Second Edition New York: G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS London: WILSONS & MILNE 1896 TO RICHARD COPLEY CHRISTIE THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED IN MEMORY OF A FRIENDSHIP OF PECULIAR GRACE AND INSPIRATION PREFACE The purpose of this book is twofold--first and foremost, to illustrate a question of principle by the aid of historic test and application; secondly, to furnish for the use of historical students an elementary handbook of the currencies of the more important European states from the thirteenth century downwards. Little need be said as to this latter purpose. The total omission of the historic, reasoned, and consecutive study of currency history--the most important domain of practical economics--from the curriculum of every university in the land is matter for surprise and regret, and can only be attributed to the lack of an initiative and of a handbook. As to the former purpose, there is no field of history so strewn with scientific (i.e. comparative and prophetic) possibilities as economic history; and in economic history there is no department in which the study of the experience of other times and nations is more necessary and resultful, lesson-full, wisdom-full, than the domain of currency. The verdict of history on the great problem of the nineteenth century--bimetallism--is clear and crushing and final, and against the evidence of history no gainsaying of theory ought for a moment to stand. Throughout mediæval Europe and up to the close of the eighteenth century the currency of Europe was practically bimetallic--practically, because actually so without the prescription of a law of tender, and without the allowance of any theoretic grasp or conception of the practice as distinctively what nowadays we understand as bimetallic.