Book cover of Forging Nations: Currency, Power, and Nationality in Britain and Ireland since 1603

Book description

In Forging Nations, Blaazer studies the relationships between money, power, and nationality in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the first attempts to unify their currencies following the Union of the Crowns in 1603 to the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. Through successive crises spanning four centuries, Forging Nations examines…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Forging Nations as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

When I got wind of this book, I had just finished writing a book about gold and money in Britain from the 1750s to the 1850s. Although I knew about the long history of British money prior to the 1750s and also about its complicated history down to the present, I jumped at the chance to read the whole story laid out between two covers. Blaazer deftly accomplishes this task, with a special focus on the strikingly different paths that money took in Britain’s three corners of Ireland, Scotland, and England (not so much on Wales, as is so often…

From Timothy's list on the strangeness of money.

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The Rosewood Penny by J.S. Fields,

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