By the end of the nineteenth century, the world was ready to adopt the gold standard out of concerns of national power, prestige, and anti-English competition. Yet although the gold standard allowed countries to enact a virtual single world currency, the years before World War I were not a time of unfettered liberal economics and one-world, one-market harmony. Outside of Europe, the gold standard became a tool for nationalists and protectionists primarily interested in growing domestic industry and imperial expansion. This overlooked trend, provocatively reassessed in Steven Bryan's well-documented history, contradicts our conception of the gold standard as a British-based system infused with English ideas, interests, and institutions. In countries like Japan and Argentina, where nationalist concerns focused on infant-industry protection and the growth of military power, the gold standard enabled the expansion of trade and the goals of the age: industry and empire. Bryan argues that these countries looked less to Britain and more to North America and the rest of Europe for ideological models. Not only does this history challenge our idealistic notions of the prewar period, but it also reorients our understanding of the history that followed. Policymakers of the 1920s latched onto the idea that global prosperity before World War I was the result of a system dominated by English liberalism. Their attempt to reproduce this triumph helped bring about the global downturn, the Great Depression, and the collapse of the interwar world.

This is an impressive and original work. Steven Bryan synthesizes an enormous amount of reading about late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century monetary and economic history and uses it to create an interesting and attractive frame for his own original research. I have rarely seen the much praised ideal of transnational history so fully achieved. -- Mark Metzler, University of Texas at Austin Literature on the gold standard tends to be dominated by Europeans, economists, and the late-nineteenth century. Steven Bryan's study, by shifting the focus to the mid-nineteenth century, power politics, and Argentina and Japan, reminds us that this is only part of the story. His new perspective provokes new thoughts. -- Barry Eichengreen, Univesity of California, Berkeley This masterful account follows in the footsteps of seminal works by Robert Triffin and Barry Eichengreen, who convincingly demonstrated the wide gulf between the 'myth and realities' of the operation of the gold standard in core countries. Bryan challenges the conventional 'sound money' wisdom as recently applied to peripheral or developing countries. Through in-depth case studies of Argentina and Japan, he reaches the paradoxical conclusion that decisive political support for the gold standard came from ardent nationalists in pursuit of 'neo-mercantile,' not liberal, political economic agendas. His findings also caution against a dogmatic adherence to the monetary straightjacket of the gold standard and its modern-day variants. Drawing on an impressive range of theoretical perspectives and primary sources, Bryan has crafted a richly documented, analytically informed global history as seen from the periphery-not just core regions. -- David F. Weiman, Barnard College

About the Author
Steven Bryan is an attorney in Tokyo. He received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. His next project is a comparative history of Japan in the 1920s and 1990s.

Reviews
A welcome addiction to the work focusing on experience outside the European core to the gold standard world. -- Kenneth Moure Journal of World History



Book Information
ISBN 9780231152525
Author Steven Bryan
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press