Back Cover -- Foreword by George Thomas, The Right Honourable Viscount Tonypandy -- Dedication -- Acknowledgements -- Preface to the third edition -- 1 THE NATURE AND ORIGINS OF MONEY AND BARTER -- The importance of money -- Sovereignty of monetary policy -- Unprecedented inflation of population -- Barter: as old as the hills -- Persistence of gift exchange -- Money: barter's disputed paternity -- Modern barter and countertrading -- Modern retail barter -- Primitive money: definitions and early development -- Economic origins and functions -- The quality-to-quantity pendulum: a metatheory of money -- 2 FROM PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT MONEY TO THE INVENTION OF COINAGE, 3000-600 BC -- Pre-metallic money -- The ubiquitous cowrie -- Fijian whales' teeth and Yap stones -- Wampum: the favourite American-Indian money -- Cattle: man's first working-capital asset -- Pre-coinage metallic money -- Money and banking in Mesopotamia -- Girobanking in early Egypt -- Coin and cash in early China -- Coinage and the change from primitive to modern economies -- The invention of coinage in Lydia and Ionian Greece -- 3 THE DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK AND ROMAN MONEY, 600 BC-AD 400 -- The widening circulation of coins -- Laurion silver and Athenian coinage -- Greek and metic private bankers -- The Attic money standard -- Banking in Delos -- Macedonian money and hegemony -- The financial consequences of Alexander the Great -- Money and the rise of Rome -- Roman finance, Augustus to Aurelian, 14 BC-AD 275 -- Diocletian and the world's first budget, 284-305 -- Finance from Constantine to the Fall of Rome -- The nature of Graeco-Roman monetary expansion -- 4 THE PENNY AND THE POUND IN MEDIEVALEUROPEAN MONEY, 410-1485 -- Early Celtic coinage -- Money in the Dark Ages: its disappearance and re-emergence -- The Canterbury, Sutton Hoo and Crondall finds.

From sceattas and stycas to Offa's silver penny -- The Vikings and Anglo-Saxon recoinage cycles, 789-978 -- Danegeld and heregeld, 978-1066 -- The Norman Conquest and the Domesday Survey, 1066-1087 -- The pound sterling to 1272 -- Touchstones and trials of the Pyx -- The Treasury and the tally -- The Crusades: financial and fiscal effects -- The Black Death and the Hundred Years War -- Poll taxes and the Peasants' Revolt -- Money and credit at the end of the Middle Ages -- 5 THE EXPANSION OF TRADE AND FINANCE,1485-1640 -- What was new in the new era? -- Printing: a new alternative to minting -- The rise and fall of the world's first paper money -- Bullion's dearth and plenty -- Potosi and the silver flood -- Henry VII: fiscal strength and sound money, 1485-1509 -- The dissolution of the monasteries -- The Great Debasement -- Recoinage and after: Gresham's Law in Action, 1560-1640 -- The so-called price revolution of 1540-1640 -- Usury: a just price for money -- Bullionism and the quantity theory of money -- Banking still foreign to Britain? -- 6 THE BIRTH AND EARLY GROWTH OF BRITISHBANKING, 1640-1789 -- Bank money supply first begins to exceed coinage -- From the seizure of the mint to its mechanization, 1640-1672 -- From the great recoinage to the death of Newton, 1696-1727 -- The rise of the goldsmith-banker, 1633-1672 -- Tally-money and the Stop of the Exchequer -- Foundation and early years of the Bank of England -- The national debt and the South Sea Bubble -- Financial consequences of the Bubble Act -- Financial developments in Scotland, 1695-1789 -- The money supply and the constitution -- 7 THE ASCENDANCY OF STERLING, 1789-1914 -- Gold versus paper . . . finding a successful compromise -- Country banking and the industrial revolution to 1826 -- Currency, the bullionists and the inconvertible pound,1783-1826.

The Bank of England and the joint-stock banks, 1826-1850 -- The Banking Acts of 1826 -- The Bank Charter Act 1833 -- Currency School versus Banking School -- The Bank Charter Act of 1844: rules plus discretion -- Amalgamation, limited liability and the end of unit banking -- The rise of working-class financial institutions -- Friendly societies, unions, co-operatives and collecting societies -- The building societies -- The savings banks: TSB and POSB -- The discount houses, the money market and the bill on London -- The merchant banks, the capital market and overseas investment -- The final triumph of the full gold standard, 1850-1914 -- Gold reserves, tallies and the constitution -- 8 BRITISH MONETARY DEVELOPMENT IN THETWENTIETH CENTURY -- Introduction: a century of extremes -- Financing the First World War, 1914-1918 -- The abortive struggle for a new gold standard, 1918-1931 -- Cheap money in recovery, war and reconstruction, 1931-1951 -- Inflation and the integration of an expanding monetary system,1951-1990 -- A general perspective on unprecedented inflation, 1934-1990 -- Keynesian 'ratchets' give a permanent lift to inflation -- Filling the financial gaps -- Stronger competition and weaker credit control -- The American-led invasion and the Eurocurrency markets in London -- The monetarist experiment, 1973-1990 -- The secondary banking crisis: causes and consequences -- Supervising the financial system -- Thatcher and the medium-term financial strategy -- EMU: the end of the pound sterling? -- 9 AMERICAN MONETARY DEVELOPMENT SINCE 1700 -- Introduction: the economic basis of the dollar -- Colonial money: the swing from dearth to excess, 1700-1775 -- The official dollar and the growth of banking up to the Civil War, 1775-1861 -- 'Continental' debauchery -- The constitution and the currency -- The national debt and the bank wars.

A banking free-for-all, 1833-1861 -- From the Civil War to the founding of the 'Fed', 1861-1913 -- Contrasts in financing the Civil War -- Establishing the national financial framework -- Bimetallism's final fling -- From gold standard to central bank(s), 1900-1913 -- The banks through boom and slump, 1914-1944 -- The 'Fed' finds its feet, 1914-1928 -- Feet of clay, 1928-1933 -- Banking reformed and resilient, 1933-1944 -- Bretton Woods: vision and realization, 1944-1991 -- American banks abroad -- From accord to deregulation, 1951-1980 -- Hazardous deposit insurance for thrifts, banks . . . and taxpayers -- From unit banking . . . to balkanized banking -- Summary and conclusion: from beads to banks without barriers -- 10 ASPECTS OF MONETARY DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPEAND JAPAN -- Introduction: banking expertise shifts northward -- The rise of Dutch finance -- The importance of the Bank of Amsterdam -- The Dutch tulip mania, 1634-1637 -- Other early public banks -- France's hesitant banking progress -- German monetary development: from insignificance to cornerstone of the EMS -- The monetary development of Japan since 1868 -- Introduction: the significance of banks in Japanese development -- Westernization and adaption, 1868-1918 -- Depression, recovery and disaster, 1918-1948 -- Resurgence and financial supremacy, 1948-1990 -- Stagnation and the limitations of monetary policy, 1990-2002 -- 11 THIRD WORLD MONEY AND DEBT IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY -- Introduction: Third World poverty in perspective -- Stages in the drive for financial independence -- Stage 1: Laissez-faire and the Currency Board System,c.1880-1931 -- Stage 2: The sterling area and the sterling balances,1931-1951 -- Stage 3: Independence, planning euphoria and bankingmania, 1951-1973 -- Stage 4: Market realism and financial deepening, 1973-1993 -- The Nigerian experience.

Impact of the Shaw-McKinnon thesis -- Contrasts in financial deepening -- Third World debt and development: evolution of the crisis -- Conclusion: reanchoring the runaway currencies -- 12 GLOBAL MONEY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE -- Long-term swings in the quality/quantity pendulum -- The military and developmental money-ratchets -- Free trade in money in a global, cashless society? -- Independent multi-state central banking -- Conclusion: 'Money is coined liberty' -- 13 FURTHER TOWARDS A GLOBAL CURRENCY -- The epoch-making euro -- More coins in an increasingly cashless society -- The paradox of coin: rising production - falling significance -- Speculation and the Tobin Tax -- The end of inflation? -- Bibliography -- Index.