Making Money in Sixteenth-Century France

Jotham Parsons

Description

Coinage and currency-abstract and socially created units of value and power-were basic to early modern society. By controlling money, the people sought to understand and control their complex, expanding, and interdependent world. In Making Money in Sixteenth-Century France, Jotham Parsons investigates the creation and circulation of currency in France. The royal Cour des Monnaies centralized monetary administration, expanding its role in the emerging modern state during the sixteenth century and assuming new powers as an often controversial repository of theoretical and administrative expertise. The Cour des Monnaies, Parsons shows, played an important role in developing the contemporary understanding of money, as a source of both danger and opportunity at the center of economic and political life. More practically, the Monnaies led generally successful responses to the endemic inflation of the era and the monetary chaos of a period of civil war. Its work investigating and prosecuting counterfeiters shone light into a picaresque world of those who used the abstract and artificial nature of money for their own ends. Parsons's broad, multidimensional portrait of money in early modern France also encompasses the literature of the age, in which money's arbitrary and dangerous power was a major theme.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Economic history
• History of Europe
• France

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 06 février 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801454981
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

MAKING MONEY IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE

MAKINGMONEY IN SIXTEENTH- CENTURY FRANCE

CURRE NCY, CULT URE , AND T HE STAT E

J ot h a m Pa r s o n s

CORNELLUNIVERSITYPRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2014 by Cornell University

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First published 2014 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Parsons, Jotham, author.  Making money in sixteenthcentury France : currency, culture, and the state / Jotham Parsons.  pages cm  Includes bibliographical references.  ISBN 9780801451591 (cloth : alk. paper)  1. Money—France—History—16th century. I. Title.  HG976.P37 2015  332.4'94409031—dc23 2014021596

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possibleinthepublishingofitsbooks.Suchmaterials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

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Cover illustration:Der Münzmeister(The Coin Stamper), from Jost Amman,Das Ständebuch(1568).

ForElaine

Co nt e nts

Acknowledgmentsix

Introduction 1. The Cour des Monnaies 2. The Logic of Economic Regulation 3. The Inflationary Crisis and the Reforms of 1577 4. Money and Sovereignty 5. Crimes against the Currency 6. The Monetary Imaginary of Renaissance France Conclusion: The Court and the Queen

Bibliography289 Index 319

1 17 60

104 153 193

237 282

A c k n o w l e d g m e nt s

Thisbookhasbeenalongtimeinthemaking, and I have incurred many debts of gratitude along the way. Financial sup- port was provided by Roosevelt University, Duquesne University, the Stan- ford University Libraries (Gustave Gimon Visiting Scholar Fellowship), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (N.E.H. Summer Stipend). Publication of this volume was generously assisted by a subvention from Duquesne University and its MacAnulty College of Liberal Arts. The list of libraries and archives on whose facilities and staff I have depended is very long; aside from the institutions just mentioned, they include the Biblio- thèque Nationale and Archives Nationales of France, the Archives Munici- pales de Lyon, the Newberry Library, the Harvard University Libraries, and the University of Wisconsin and University of Pittsburgh libraries, among others. Two seminars provided especially valuable occasions to reflect on and discuss aspects of this project: a 2003 N.E.H. Summer Seminar, “Surveying Paris: Urban Space and Urban Culture in the Early Modern City,” directed by Karen Newman; and a 2008 Folger Library Faculty Seminar, “Connec- tions, Trust, and Causation in Economic History,” directed by Craig Mul- drew. I have also received valuable feedback from a variety of presentations of material from this project, at meetings of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, the Society for French Historical Studies, the Western Society for French History, the Pittsburgh Area Early Modern Group, and the West Virginia University History Graduate Colloquium. Portions of chapter 3 appeared as “Governing Sixteenth-Century France: The Monetary Reforms of 1577,” inFrench Historical Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 1–30, copyright 2003, Society for French Historical Studies, all rights reserved, and are reprinted by permission of the present publisher, Duke University Press. Portions of chapters 3 and 4 appeared as “Money and Sovereignty in Early Modern France,” inJournal of the History of Ideas62,, vol. no. 1, pp. 59–79, copyright 2001,Journal of the History of Ideasrights, all reserved, and are reprinted by permission of the present publisher, the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania Press.

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