Steven Bryan - The Gold Standard at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

The Gold Standard
at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Columbia Studies in International and Global History

Columbia Studies in International and Global History

The idea of globalization has become a commonplace, but we lack good histories that can explain the transnational and global processes that have shaped the contemporary world. Columbia Studies in International and Global History will encourage serious scholarship on international and global history with an eye to explaining the origins of the contemporary era. Grounded in empirical research, the titles in the series will also transcend the usual area boundaries and will address questions of how history can help us understand contemporary problems, including poverty, inequality, power, political violence, and accountability beyond the nation state.

C EMIL A YDIN

A DAM M. M C K EOWN

Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders

P ATRICK M ANNING

The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture

J AMES R ODGER F LEMING

Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control

Steven Bryan

The Gold Standard
at the Turn of the
Twentieth Century

Rising Powers, Global Money,
and the Age of Empire

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright 2010 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-52633-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bryan, Steven.
The Gold Standard at the turn of the twentieth century : rising powers,
global money, and the age of Empire / Steven Bryan.
p. cm. (Columbia studies in international and global history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-15252-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-52633-3 (electronic)
1. Gold standardJapanHistory. 2. Gold standardArgentinaHistory.
I. Title. II. Series.

HG1272.B79 2010

332.42220952dc22

2009046546

A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .

References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Contents

Annual Gold Production, Worldwide

Price of Silver in London and Silver to Gold Exchange Rate, 187095

Rate of Exchange, Paper to Gold, 18821914

Government Expenditures, 1899

Interest on the National Debt, 1899

Worldwide Exports, 1899

Argentine Population and Exports, 187099

Population by Country

I gratefully acknowledge the assistance and support of the many people and institutions who have allowed me to write this book. First and foremost, thanks go to my professors and advisers at Columbia University. Above all, to Carol Gluck, who provided guidance and support from beginning to end. To Hugh Patrick and David Weiman, who graciously supported my interest in economic history and assisted in countless ways over the years. To John Coatsworth, who kindly agreed to help on short notice and provided invaluable advice about how to frame the material for a wider audience. To Adam McKeown, who read multiple drafts and always managed to cut to the essence of the argument. To It Masanao and the faculty and staff of the Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo, who provided a research home in Japan. To the staff of the Biblioteca Nacional and Archivo General de la Nacin in Buenos Aires, who provided kind assistance on my maiden voyage to Argentina. To the faculty and staff of the Economic History Department at the London School of Economics, who provided the starting point. Finally, this book would not have been possible without the financial assistance of Columbia University, the Weatherhead Foundation, the Economic History Association, and the Japan Foundation. I thank them all.

The financial panic of 2008 marked at least a temporary interruption in the market fundamentalism that emerged out of the 1970s in Anglo-American society. But this idealized view of markets and classic English economics was, and remains, immensely influential. Its influence has been particularly strong as applied to ideas of globalization and global economic history.

In the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall it became common in Anglo-American society to look toward the turn of the twentieth century as a globalized mirror of the present. This mirror image served not only as historical dj vu but also as validation of the market-dominated turn of the twenty-first century. In both periods, goods and capital flowed around the world, businesses boomed, and prosperity reigned for most. For globalization enthusiasts looking back at the 1890s, it was almost as if their world had once before existedbefore two world wars, fascism, communism, the Great Depression, and a centurys worth of history had so rudely interrupted. Looked at in this mirror, the twentieth-century world economy seemed at its close to have come full circle.

At times there were also popular images about a brave new world of unprecedented change. But both images addressed matters from a similar starting point using similar tools. Being presented as largely an economic story, the globalization tale leaned toward being one of guidance for present-day public policy focused on the concerns, methods, and viewpoints of current day Anglo-American society. Elements of the late nineteenth-century world economy that pointed away from those of the late twentieth century slid to the background. The Depression and postWorld War II years became detours and digressions. The experiences of other countries were ignored or framed in terms of the degree they had or had not adopted ostensibly universal, Anglo-American norms.

Primarily, it became a story framed in terms of modern Anglo-American social science: neoliberalism and neoclassical economics, and their ancestor nineteenth-century English liberalism.

In this way the late twentieth-century globalization tale as popularly referenced by Britons and Americans merged with an older story among English speakers of British triumphalism and Pax Britannica. This produced a tendency in society at large not only to frame the years before World War I in terms of modern social science but also to present a world economically dominated by English ideas and institutions even where it was not. In large part this was the understandable tendency of people to place themselves at the center of the world and the center of history. It is why children around the globe grow up with maps placing their country at the center of the world even when this means slicing other countries and continents in two.