A Cultural History of Money in the Age of Enlightenment 4

"The Enlightenment was a time of monetary turmoil and transformation in Europe. Change began with a riot of experimentation, including novel ideas about human agency and capacity to promote economic progress, efforts to reframe divinity in terms (like the providential) compatible with market exchange, new instruments of credit, and innovative institutions such as national banks and capital markets. Europeans, including the settler societies in North America, improvised frantically: people faced the task of everyday exchange in changing media; governments took up the project of creating currencies that supported their political power; artists and writers raced to represent new forms of wealth and interpret the issues they raised; and intellectuals struggled to conceptualize, and tame, patterns of monetary transformation. The result was a rich debate, still unsettled, about the sources of value, the morality of the market, and the very nature of money. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of Money in the Age of Enlightenment 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."-- Provided by publisher A Cultural History of Money presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. The set of six volumes charts how money has made the world go around over four millennia and how its multiple materialities and meanings have shaped, and been shaped by, the broader social and cultural world around it. 1. A Cultural History of Money in Antiquity (2500 BCE-500 CE) 2. A Cultural History of Money in the Medieval Age (500-1400) 3. A Cultural History of Money in the Renaissance (1400-1680) 4. A Cultural History of Money in the Age of Enlightenment (1680-1820) 5. A Cultural History of Money in the Age of Empire (1820-1920) 6. A Cultural History of Money in the Modern Age (1920-present) Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. Money and its Technologies 2. Money and its Ideas 3. Money and Religion 4. Money and the Everyday 5. Money and Art (or Visual Representations) 6. Money and its Interpretation (or Verbal Representations) 7. Money and the Issues of the Age This structure offers readers a broad overview of a period within each volume or the opportunity to follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter across volumes. The full six-volume set, which is generously illustrated, combines to present the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on money in history "Money is a matter of functions four: a medium, a measure, a standard, a store." But money is always a medium of communication, too - whether about price or about political conviction and authority, fealty, desire, or disdain. In a work that spans 4,500 years, 54 writers explore how money has "made the world go round" and capture money's complexities in both substance and form. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole and, to make this resource easier to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives readers the choice of reading about a specific period, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six books. The six volumes cover Antiquity (2500 BCE-500 CE), the Medieval age (500-1400), the Renaissance era (1400-1680), the Age of Enlightenment (1680-1820), the age of empire (1820-1920), and the "modern age" (1920-twenty-first century). Themes include money and its technologies, money and its ideas, money and religion, money and the everyday, money and art, money and its interpretation, and money and the issues of the era List of Illustration s vii Notes on Contributors xii Series Preface xiv Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: Strange New Music — The Monetary Composition Made by the Enlightenment Quartet / Christine Desan 1 1. Money and its Technologies: Industrial Opposition and the Problem of Trust / Mara Caden 25 2. Money and its Ideas: Enlightenment Debates about the Morality of Money / Carl Wennerlind 53 3. Money, Ritual, and Religion: A Secularization Story / Dwight Codr 75 4. Money and the Everyday: New Practices in the Enlightenment / Craig Muldrew 95 5. Money, Art, and Representation: The Look and Sound of Money / Rebecca L. Spang 121 6. Money and its Interpretation: Paper Currency in Early America / Jennifer J. Baker 143 7. Money and the Issues of the Age: Thinking about Money in the Eighteenth Century / Daniel Carey 163 Notes 187 Bibliography 203 Index 225