Battles for the Standard: Bimetallism and the Spread of the Gold Standard in the Nineteenth Century. By Ted Wilson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Pp. xi, 200.

Extract

In the early twenty-first century, the choice of monetary regime has again become a matter of political and economic debate. The European experiment in monetary union is being watched, with a mixture of hope and fear, by policymakers in the Americas, and most likely in Asia as well. Perhaps this explains the resurgence of interest in the battles over monetary regimes in the nineteenth century, when a world that had been more or less bimetallic for several centuries switched to the gold standard. Why did it happen? Why did it happen then? Was it a change for the better or not? What were the relative contributions of economic determinism, network externalities, and global capitalism? It is this “range of territory” (now I understand why this cliché is overused!) that Ted Wilson addresses, arguing—albeit in a multicausal framework—for the importance of network externalities, and suggesting that the gold standard occurred by default rather than design. Britain went on gold early and somewhat accidentally; Germany, France and the United States followed; aspiring borrowers on the periphery did not have much choice—if they wanted access to international capital markets—so they followed, too.