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.