Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-94d59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T13:53:31.217Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A century of monetary reform in South-East Europe: from political autonomy to the gold standard, 1815–1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2017

Matthias Morys*
Affiliation:
University of York
*
Matthias Morys, Department of Economics, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom; email: matthias.morys@york.ac.uk.

Abstract

This article documents and analyses monetary reform in Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Romania from 1815 (Serbian autonomy within the Ottoman Empire) to 1910, when Greece became the last country in the region to join the gold standard. It explains the five key steps towards monetary reform which the four countries took in the same chronological order, and asks why national coinage and the foundation of a bank of note issue came late in the reform process. The South-East European countries tried to emulate West European prototypes, yet economic backwardness meant such institutions were often different from the outset, remained short-lived or both.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Banking and Financial History e.V. 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am grateful to the guest editors of this special issue and two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. This article draws partly on independent research, partly on work carried out as academic advisor to the South-East European Monetary History Network (SEEMHN) between 2006 and 2014. I owe special thanks (without implicating anyone) to the following people for providing me with feedback, helping me collect the data, sharing their data and/or explaining country-specific idiosyncrasies for which knowledge of the local languages was often essential: Adriana Aloman, Roumen Avramov, Elisabeta Blejan, Olga Christodoulaki, Brandusa Costache, Kalina Dimitrova, Margarita Dritsas, Ljiljana Djurdjevic, Martin Ivanov, Clemens Jobst, Michael Kopsidis, Sofia Lazaretou, Stefan Nikolic, Michael Palairet, Thomas Scheiber and Milan Sojic.

References

130 Years since the Establishment of the Modern Romanian Monetary System (1997). (Biblioteca Băncii Naţionale). Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică.Google Scholar
Battilossi, S. and Morys, M. (2011). Emerging stock markets in historical perspective: a research agenda. University of York Economic History Working Paper 2011/03.Google Scholar
Bulgarian National Bank (2009). Coins 1879–2009. Sofia.Google Scholar
Conant, C. A. (1902). A History of Modern Banks of Issue: with an Account of the Economic Crises of the Present Century, 2nd edn. New York: Putnam.Google Scholar
Dimitrova, K. and Ivanov, M. (2014). Bulgaria: from 1879 to 1947. In South-Eastern European Monetary and Economic Statistics from the Nineteenth Century to World War II. Athens, Sofia, Bucharest and Vienna: Bank of Greece, Bulgarian National Bank, National Bank of Romania and Oesterreichische Nationalbank.Google Scholar
Einaudi, L. L. (2007). Monetary separation and European convergence in the Balkans in the 19th century. In The Experience of Exchange Rate Regimes in South-Eastern Europe in Historical and Comparative Perspective. Proceedings of the 2nd Meeting of the South-Eastern European Monetary History Network on 12th and 13th April 2007 in Vienna. Vienna: Austrian National Bank.Google Scholar
Feis, H. (1930). Europe, the World's Banker, 1870–1914: An Account of European Foreign Investment and the Connection of World Finance with Diplomacy before the War. New Haven, CT: Council on Foreign Relations.Google Scholar
Flandreau, M. (1996). The French crime of 1873: an essay on the emergence of the international gold standard, 1870–1880. Journal of Economic History, 56, pp. 862–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gnjatovic, D. (2006). The introduction of the limping gold standard in the principality of Serbia. In Avramov, R. and Pamuk, S. (eds.), Monetary and Fiscal Policies in South-Eastern Europe: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Proceedings of the 1st Meeting of the South-Eastern European Monetary History Network. Sofia: Bulgarian National Bank.Google Scholar
Haupt, O. (1886). L'histoire monétaire de notre temps. Paris.Google Scholar
Helfferich, K. (1898). Die Reform des deutschen Geldwesens nach der Gründung des Reiches, 2 vols. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.Google Scholar
Hinic, B., Durdevic, L. and Sojic, M. (2014). Serbia/Yugoslavia: from 1884 to 1940. In South-Eastern European Monetary and Economic Statistics from the Nineteenth Century to World War II. Athens, Sofia, Bucharest and Vienna: Bank of Greece, Bulgarian National Bank, National Bank of Romania and Oesterreichische Nationalbank.Google Scholar
Lampe, J. R. and Jackson, M. R. (1982). Balkan Economic History, 1550–1950: From Imperial Border Lands to Developing Nations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lazaretou, S. (2014). Greece: from 1833 to 1949. In South-Eastern European Monetary and Economic Statistics from the Nineteenth Century to World War II. Athens, Sofia, Bucharest and Vienna: Bank of Greece, Bulgarian National Bank, National Bank of Romania and Oesterreichische Nationalbank.Google Scholar
Leconte, J-M. (1994). Le bréviaire des monnaies de l'Union latine, 1865–1926. Paris.Google Scholar
Lévy, R-G. (1911). Banques d'émission et trésors publics. Paris: Librairie Hachette.Google Scholar
Maddison, A. (2003). The World Economy: Historical Statistics. Paris: OECD Development Centre Studies.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazower, M. (2001). The Balkans. New York: Phoenix Press.Google Scholar
Morys, M. (2006). South-Eastern European growth experience in European perspective, 19th and 20th centuries. In Avramov, R. and Pamuk, S. (eds.), Monetary and Fiscal Policies in South-Eastern Europe: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Proceedings of the 1st Meeting of the South-Eastern European Monetary History Network. Sofia: Bulgarian National Bank.Google Scholar
Morys, M. (2012). The emergence of the classical gold standard. University of York Economic History Working Paper 2012/01.Google Scholar
Morys, M. (2014). South-Eastern European monetary history in a pan-European perspective, 1841–1939. In South-Eastern European Monetary and Economic Statistics from the Nineteenth Century to World War I. Athens, Sofia, Bucharest and Vienna: Bank of Greece, Bulgarian National Bank, National Bank of Romania and Oesterreichische Nationalbank.Google Scholar
Morys, M. (2015). Any lessons for today? Exchange-rate stabilisation in Greece and South-East Europe between economic and political objectives and fiscal reality, 1841–1939. EHES Working Papers in Economic History 2015/84.Google Scholar
Reichsbank (1925). Vergleichende Notenbank-Statistik. 1875–1913. Berlin: Reichsdruckerei.Google Scholar
Reti, S. P. (1998). Silver and Gold: The Political Economy of International Monetary Conferences, 1867–1892. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Sojic, M. and Djurdjevic, L. (2006). The National Bank of Serbia, 1884–2006: its establishment and the beginning of operations. In Avramov, R. and Pamuk, S. (eds.), Monetary and Fiscal Policies in South-Eastern Europe: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Proceedings of the 1st Meeting of the South-Eastern European Monetary History Network. Sofia: Bulgarian National Bank.Google Scholar
South-Eastern European Monetary and Economic Statistics from the Nineteenth Century to World War II (2014). Athens, Sofia, Bucharest and Vienna: Bank of Greece, Bulgarian National Bank, National Bank of Romania and Oesterreichische Nationalbank.Google Scholar
Stoenescu, G. V., Aloman, A., Blejan, E. and Costache, B. (2011). Monetary policy in South-East Europe in the transition from bimetallism to the gold standard. In National Bank of Romania (ed.), Proceedings of the 6th Meeting of the South-East European Monetary History Network on 18th March 2011 in Bucharest. Bucharest.Google Scholar
Sundhausen, H. (1989). Historische Statistik Serbiens, 1834–1914, mit europaeischen Vergleichsdaten. Munich: Oldenbourg.Google Scholar
Tuncer, A. C. (2015). Sovereign Debt and International Financial Control: The Middle East and the Balkans, 1870–1914. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Warren, G. F. and Pearson, F. A. (1933). Prices. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar