Austin Dean, "China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937" (Cornell UP, 2020)

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Jan 5, 2025

Austin Dean, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, delves into China's unique monetary history from 1873 to 1937. He discusses the complexities of China's transition from silver to the gold standard and the political and economic challenges involved. The conversation touches on the Boxer Indemnity's influence on currency reform and the impact of U.S. foreign policy on China's economic stability. Dean highlights the pivotal moment in 1935 when China shifted from the silver standard, reshaping global economics and revealing the interplay of local governance and international interests.

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ANECDOTE

Origin of Research

Austin Dean's interest in Chinese history began in college.
A line about a U.S. silver coin for the China market in Frank H.H. King's book inspired his research.

INSIGHT

Silver's Overlooked Importance

Silver's historical significance as a global currency is often overlooked due to the emphasis on the gold standard.
From the 1500s, silver linked China, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S., serving as a global medium of exchange.

INSIGHT

China's Complex Monetary System

China's monetary system used copper coins for local trade and silver from international trade, alongside abstract "tail" units.
The value of silver relative to tails and copper fluctuated, creating complexity in transactions.

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In the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an "encounter of wits." China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937 (Cornell UP, 2020) focuses on how officials, policy makers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system? Far from a narrow, technical issue, Chinese monetary reform is a dramatic story full of political revolutions, economic depressions, chance, and contingency. As different governments in China attempted to create a unified monetary standard in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the United States, England, and Japan tried to shape the direction of Chinese monetary reform for their own benefit.

Austin Dean argues convincingly that the Silver Era in world history ended owing to the interaction of imperial competition in East Asia and the state-building projects of different governments in China. When the Nationalist government of China went off the silver standard in 1935, it marked a key moment not just in Chinese history but in world history.

Austin Dean is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His work has appeared in Modern China and the Journal of American-East Asian Relations. He is on twitter @thelicentiate.

Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, tentatively titled Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

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