360 pages : 24 cm

For much of human history, the motive force behind war, conquest, social conflict and world exploration has been the drive to acquire gold. From the ancient world of Croesus to the wealthy dynasties of Renaissance Italy, from the earliest European explorations into Africa, America, and Asia to the gold rushes of the nineteenth century and the banking crises that lay beyond them, Pierre Vilar depicts the awesome power of avarice to structure the world in which we live. The insidious power of gold and money is the subject of this enlightening and entertaining history. The age of exploration brought an influx of treasure into Western Europe, prompting disputes between theologians and early economists over the causes of inflation in the sixteenth century. In time, American silver distorted metropolitan Spanish society beyond recognition. Vilar goes on to examine the roots of the modern banking and financial systems in institutions founded in Holland, England and France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And in the nineteenth century, the gold rushes of Australia, California and South Africa generated new modifications in the international monetary system. -- Back cover

"First published as Oro y moneda en la historia (1450-1920) by Ediciones Ariel, Barcelona 1969. First published in English by New Left Books 1976. Verso edition 1984"--Title page verso

Includes bibliographical references and index

Introduction : Gold in world history -- Primitive times and the ancient world -- Some observations on the middle ages -- The conjuncture and price movements, 1450-1500 -- African gold and Genoese-Iberian discoveries -- Portugal, Spain and the gold trade -- The Spanish discovery of Caribbean gold -- The conjuncture of 1450-1530 -- The beginnings of the price revolution -- THe price revolution and the channels of trade -- Bullion and Portuguese commerce -- The gold and silver of the Americas -- Innovations in the New World -- Potosí -- Huancavelica and the distribution of American silver -- Gold and silver in Castile -- The Spanish debate on precious metals -- The price revolution in France -- French monetary theory -- The price revolution in Italy -- Bullion in the European and colonial economies, 1500-1800 -- The monetary role of the Bank of Amsterdam -- The establishment of the Bank of England -- English expansion and Brazilian gold -- Monetary stabilisation and economic change in Spain -- From Colbert to law -- The 18th century conjuncture -- Bullion and the ancien regime -- Banking and credit in France, 1726-1790 -- Banking and credit in England, 1726-1790 -- Mexican silver and the European conjuncture -- Money in the French Revolution -- Monetary problems in England, 1797-1819 -- The 19th century conjuncture -- The relationship between prices and the output of gold -- In search of a global but not one-sided explanation

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