The nineteenth century was a time of intense monetization of social life: increasingly money became the only means of access to goods and services, especially in the new metropolises; new technologies and infrastructures emerged for saving and circulating money and for standardizing coinage; and paper currencies were printed, founded purely on trust without any intrinsic metallic value. But the monetary landscape was ambivalent so that the forces unifying monetary practice (imperial and national currencies, global monetary standards such as the gold standard) coexisted with the proliferation of local currencies. Money became a central issue in politics, the arts, and sciences - and the modern discipline of economics was born, with its claim to a monopoly on knowing and governing money.
Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of Money in the Age of Empire presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of technologies, ideas, ritual and religion, the everyday, art and representation, interpretation, and the issues of the age.
List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Series Preface, Bill Maurer, University of California Irvine, USA Introduction: Monetary Landscapes of the Nineteenth-Century, Federico Neiburg, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Nigel Dodd, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK 1. Money and its Technologies: Inventing the Future through Money - Images of Monetization in Nineteenth Century American Patents, Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, University of California ,San Diego, USA 2. Money and its Ideas: Colonial Currencies, Money Illusions, Gopalan Balachandran, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland 3. Money, Ritual, and Religion: Reason, Race, and the Re-enchantment of the World, Bill Maurer, University of California, Irvine, USA 4. Money and the Everyday: Paper Money, Community, and Nationalism in the Antebellum US, Michael O’Malley, George Mason University, USA 5. Money, Art, and Representation: ‘t’was only a balloon’ - Seeing and Satire in the Cultural History of Money, Nicky Marsh, University of Southampton, UK 6. Money and its Interpretation: The Century of Mobility and Acceleration and its Money, Leopoldo Waizbort, University of São Paulo, Brazil 7. Money and the Issues of the Age, Nigel Dodd, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Notes Bibliography Index
Federico Neiburg is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Museu Nacional), Brazil. Nigel Dodd was Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
