Within the expanding field of nineteenth-century monetary history, the business of money-making and money-dealing has become critical to explain the first era of financial globalization (1870-1914). The papers in this panel explore the history of commodity money from the 1820s to the 1890s adopting international and global perspectives. The papers study commodity money flows between individuals, firms, and countries (Mexico, the United States, Great Britain, France, China, Australia). The papers explore how metallic currencies enabled or arrested the monetary governance of those countries through the interactions between producers, intermediaries, and users of commodity money. Commercial and financial ties, along with politics, empire, and geopolitical rivalries, forcefully expanded and constrained the degrees of freedom for mercantile and financial communities, financial centers, and nation-states in the transition from international bimetallism to the international gold standard.
Sandra Kunt Ficker (El Colegio de México) will present a paper reconstructing the flows and uses of Mexican silver exports to Great Britain, France, and the United States between 1821 and 1870, and silver’s role in the integration of Asia to the global economy. Nicholas Guoth (independent scholar) will present a paper on the global movement of gold and silver into and out of Great Britain in the early 1850s and its relationship to capital flows, investment, and arbitrage. Manuel A. Bautista-González (Columbia University in the City of New York) will present a paper on the stabilizing role of Mexican silver pesos (dollars) in preventing the suspension of specie payments in New Orleans during the financial panic of 1857. Jonah Estess (American University) will present a paper about the domestic and international political and economic pressures that kept the United States at arm’s length during international monetary conferences held in Paris between 1868 and 1892. The papers’ focus on the constitution and mechanics of gold and silver markets provides a counterpoint to structural narratives explaining the transition from international bimetallism to the international gold standard.