Empire, Industry, and Globalization: Rethinking the Emergence of the Gold Standard in the 19th‐century World

Abstract

AbstractThis state of the field essay surveys recent scholarship on the history of the international gold standard. Taken together, recent studies have re‐situated the emergence of the classical gold standard in historical context, emphasizing the rapidly changing world of 19th‐century globalization, industrialization, and imperialism. This work has significant implications for our understanding of the gold standard in world history. In particular, recent studies have placed new emphasis on non‐economic factors that led to the establishment of a truly international gold standard. Among these factors, the ambitions for empire and modernization among leaders in the non‐European world played a key role in the decline of regional monetary regimes based on silver or bimetallism and the emergence of the international gold standard in the late‐19th century.