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

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 critical struggles over monetary power between the state and its creditors, and within and between nations during the long, multifaceted process of creating the United Kingdom as a monetary as well as a political union. The book shows how and why centuries of monetary dysfunction and conflict eventually gave way to the era of the sterling gold standard, when elite and popular beliefs about money converged around a set of almost unassailable monetary dogmas that transcended differences of nationality, party, and class. Sustained by a mixture of historical myths and imperial hubris, this consensus effortlessly reinforced the authority and served the interests of the monetary elite, even after its economic foundations had collapsed under the pressure of war and international competition. Forging Nations concludes by showing how the end of the UK's global hegemony and the prospect of Scottish independence have resuscitated historical differences between England, Ireland, and Scotland in attitudes to currency's role in defining national identity, while the Global Financial Crisis has revived forgotten debates over the nature of money and monetary power.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1: 'I will make them one nation': 1603-1660 2: The decline of the old monetary order: 1660-1689 3: Money and Revolution-the case of England: 1690-1697 4: Revolution, Union & Divergence-from Scotland to North Britain: 1689-1772 5: Engines of State, Emblems of Nation, Tokens of Trust: 1695-1796 6: The Only True, Intelligible Standard: 1793-1822 7: The Limits of Perfection: 1825-1914 8: Things Fall Apart: 1914-1931 Epilogue: the burdens and uses of the past Bibliography

About the Author :
David Blaazer has researched and taught mainly British and Irish history at La Trobe University, the Australian National University, and the University of New South Wales. His early research was on the non-communist left in Britain 1884-1939. Since the late 1990s he has been working on political, social, and cultural aspects of British and Irish monetary history and has published numerous journal articles and presented many papers on a wide variety of topics in that field.

Review :
...his book reveals the unappreciated but crucial role of money in the political, social, and cultural history of Great Britain...Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.