黑料正能量

We are happy to invite you to the next session of the 黑料正能量 Seminar on the History of Political Economy in collaboration with the Center for Critical Democracy Studies. Rebecca L. Spang (Distinguished Professor of History, Indiana University) will give a talk based on her paper 鈥淲hose Problem was Small Change? Eighteenth-Century Money in Comparative Perspective.鈥�

Title: 鈥淲hose Problem was Small Change? Eighteenth-Century Money in Comparative Perspective.鈥�
Date and time: Tuesday March 18, 5:30pm (Paris time)

Venue: Room Q-801, Quai d鈥橭rsay building, The American University of Paris (entrance through 6 rue du Colonel Combes 75007)

Please register for this event.

Abstract: Historians of medieval and early modern Europe have long been familiar with the 鈥渂ig problem of small money鈥� (see Cipolla; Sargent and Velde). European authorities in this period set rates at which metals would be minted into various coins but they left the decision to mint (rather than hold metal in other forms) up to the private sector. A coin鈥檚 value in exchange was determined by its metal content. Smaller denominations were chronically under produced or drained out of local circulation. This paper offers a comparative analysis of eighteenth-century Britain and the Qing Empire to ask whose problem was small change and how was it resolved. Unlike their European counterparts, Chinese empires of the pre-modern era prioritized the production of small-denomination coin and instead faced periodic difficulty with the supply of big money鈥攁 difficulty addressed under the Yuan (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) with the first widely circulated paper money.

Please note that Rebecca L. Spang will be also delivering a lecture titled 鈥淩estaurants and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Paris鈥� on Monday 17 March in C-102 from 18h30 to 20h.