Oliver Volckart

Money, States, and Empire: Financial Integration and Institutional Change in Central Europe, 1400–1520

By analyzing a newly compiled database of exchange rates, this article finds that in Central Europe money markets integrated cyclically during the fifteenth century. The cycles were associated with monetary debasements. Long-distance financial integration progressed in connection with the rise of the territorial state, facilitated by the synergy between princes and emperor, which helped to avoid coordination failures. For Central Europe, theories of state formation and market integration should therefore take interstate actors into account.

The political economy of agricultural protection: Sweden 1887

We analyse the Swedish general elections that took place in spring and autumn 1887. Our aim is to discover which groups of voters were responsible for the severe losses that the supporters of free trade suffered in the second of these contests, and that allowed the protectionists to gain the majority in parliament and to initiate a new tariff policy. We find that while capital owners and wage earners consistently favoured free trade, in the spring election only the largest farmers supported protectionism. By autumn, political preferences among smallholders and middling farmers had shifted in favour of protectionism, too. As these groups were not specialised in the production of import competing goods, we assume that the political landslide in the autumn elections can be attributed to the influence of anti-free trade propaganda.

Power politics and princely debts: why Germany's common currency failed, 1549–56†

The article argues that in the first half of the sixteenth century the need to avoid rounds of competitive debasements was the primary motive for the creation of a common currency valid in the whole Holy Roman Empire. In the years 1549 to 1551, the estates came close to achieving this. In contrast to what is suggested in the literature, their attempt did not fail because the Empire was economically poorly integrated or the will to co-operate was lacking. Rather, it failed because during the talks, the estates lost sight of the original motive, the princes favouring a bimetallic system that they hoped would allow them deflating the real value of their debts, and Charles V undervaluing the taler in the hope that this would weaken political opponents. These decisions antagonised important actors; when it proved impossible to enforce them, the Empire’s common currency failed.