The Theory of Imaginary Money from Charlemagne to the French Revolution

Abstract

If one reads the books on monetary subjects that were written in the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, one frequently encounters the concept of ‘imaginary money’. Other terms used are ‘ideal money’, ‘political money’, moneta numeraria, ‘money of account’. What these terms meant was not very clear even to contemporaries. The most authoritative writer among the historians of French monetary vicissitudes, François Le Blanc, resigned himself to defining as imaginary any kind of money which, ‘properly speaking, is but a collective term comprising a certain number of real moneys’. The imaginary money which almost everywhere was called ‘pound’ or an equivalent term such as ‘livre’, ‘lira’, ‘pond’, was, in Le Blanc’s words, ‘never changing in value; in fact, we have used it since the time of Charlemagne, and it has always been worth 20 sous (shillings), and each sou, 12 deniers (pence)’.¹ It is called ‘imaginary’ because of the fact that it has never been coined; ‘because we have never had a real specie which has consistently been worth 20 sous or one worth 12 deniers’. Although from time immemorial men have neither seen nor touched any imaginary money, nevertheless, in the remote past it was something real, ‘since if we go back to the time when in France people began to count in pounds, shillings, and pence, we shall find that these imaginary moneys owe their origin to a real thing’.

A translation, by Giorgio Tagliacozzo, of ‘Teoria della moneta immaginaria nel tempo da Carlomagno alla rivoluzione francese’, Rivista di storia economica, 1936, I, 1–35. The essay is printed here with the permission of President Einaudi, who has approved the translation. The editors acknowledge the valuable assistance of Raymond de Roover in the preparation of the manuscript.

With the approval of the author, paragraphs 31, 32, 33 and 35 were omitted from the translation. Paragraph 34 of the original is number 32 in the present version; to preserve the continuity of the argument President Einaudi has made a brief addition to this paragraph. The notes of the original article have been included a few notes added by the translator.