Wages and Currency. Global Comparisons from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century

The basic hypothesis of this volume is that currency patterns may tell us something about the spread of wage payments in specific societies in history. As far as wages are paid in currency, in particular in coin, specific patterns of denominations produced and used in space and time may provide insights into the importance of wage labour in those societies. In this book, a number of specialists discuss the relationship between wages and currency, with reference to different countries and regions in Europe, Asia, and South America over more than 2000 years. The main purpose of this volume is to look for new sources from the fields of monetary history and numismatics for the occurrence and importance of wage labour in general. More specifically, the contributions offer new perspectives on those periods and those parts of the world where alternative sources for labour history were hitherto lacking; or, where a fresh view on the occurrence and nature of wage labour would be worthwhile.

Contents

Jan Lucassen/Arent Pol: Preface
1. Jan Lucassen: Introduction: Wages and Currency, 500 BCE - 2000 CE
2. Helen Wang: Official Salaries and Local Wages in Juyan, North-West China, First Century BCE to First Century CE
3. Johan van Heesch: Some Aspects of Wage Payments and Coinage in Ancient Rome, First to Third Centuries CE
4. Arjan van Aelst: A South-Chinese Currency Zone between the Twelfth and Nineteenth Centuries
5. Yoshiaki Shikano: Currency, Wage Payments, and Large Funds Settlement in Japan, 1600-1868
6. Willem G. Wolters: How Were Labourers Paid in the Philippine Islands during the Nineteenth Century?
7. Jan Luiten van Zanden: Linking Two Debates: Money Supply, Wage Labour and Economic Development in Java in the Nineteenth Century
8. Alan M. Stahl: Coins for Trade and for Wages: The Development of Coinage Systems in Medieval Venice
9. Nicholas Mayhew: Wages and Currency: The Case in Britain up to c. 1600
10. Jan Lucassen: Wage Payments and Currency Circulation in the Netherlands from 1200 to 2000
11. John TePaske: Early Spanish Colonial Mints: Mexico, Santo Domingo, Lima, Potosí
12. Najaf Haider: Structure and Movement of Wages in the Mughal Empire, 1500-1700
13. Om Prakash: Long Distance Trade, Coinage and Wages in India, 1600-1960
14. Jan Lucassen: The Logistics of Wage Payments: Changing Patterns in Northern India in the 1840s
15. Craig Muldrew: Wages and the Problem of Monetary Scarcity in Early Modern England

See also: Wages and Currency: Visualizing Wage Payments