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The Global History of Money

Instructor(s): Jonathan Levy
Winter 2023

This course explores the last five hundred years of global economic history from the perspective of the evolving institution of money. After considering theories of money, we address the histories of three global currencies: silver, gold, and the US dollar. The course studies the role that silver played in the emergence of global capitalism during the European conquest of the Americas, given Asian demand for silver; the rise of the international gold standard in the nineteenth-century era of the Industrial Revolution, as well as the role gold played in the Great Depression; the role of the US dollar in the post–World War II international monetary system, as well as in the more recent era of globalization, including challenges today to the dollar’s hegemony by other state currencies, as well as cryptocurrencies.

HIST 49304 | CCCT 49304 | SCTH 39304