Sterling The History of a Currency [Hardcover]

With this passage, Nicholas Mayhew begins his fascinating look at one of the world?s most storied, influential currencies. Sterling: The History of a Currency is both an absorbing account of the global impact of currency throughout the second millennium and an entertaining primer in financial history and theory.

Mayhew traces the path of sterling from its genesis around 1080, during the rule of William the Conqueror, through latter-day struggles to hold its own amidst the global retreat from precious metals standards and the still-developing Euro. Tales of laborers and merchants interweave with those of knights and kings to reveal the social fabric of European society in 1500. Passages from Adam Smith?s 1776 classic The Wealth of Nations outline early but fundamental principles of banking. The dramatic increase in the early nineteenth-century supply of sterling, accompanied by its equally dramatic fall in value, is explored, and the evolution of money from silver and gold through paper, plastic, and electronic impulses is contrasted with social movements that have changed our need for, and relationship with, money.

Sterling, like the English landscape, has evolved over the centuries, reflecting and sometimes leading to changes in the nation?s history, and also generating a sense of unchanging stability of fundamental importance to the national psyche.

The history of sterling is nothing less than the history of England and the world. Sterling tells that story with all the vividness and drama which its topic so richly deserves.

This profound book also travels far into the heart of mankind?s physical and emotional relCÔ