Money on the Road to Empire —Japan's Choice for Gold Monometallism

Michael Schiltz

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Matsukata Masayoshi's decision to bring Japan upon the gold standard has often been presented as the self-evident result of his insight in some imperfections endemic to the silver standard and bimetallism. Turning to Marc Flandreau's refutation of the view that the growth toward an international gold standard system was preordained, this article inquires its consequences for discussions of Japan's late nineteenth century monetary situation. I argue that Matsukata's policies should not be discussed in terms of the assumed superiority of one standard over another, but should be studied as a political choice with respect to Japan's place in the world, both strategically (as an imperialist power) and economically (namely as economic partner of the gold standard countries).

Keywords: Matsukata Masayoshi; monetary standards; Latin Monetary Union; Sino-Japanese war; imperialism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N25 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mon
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/6719/1/MPRA_paper_6719.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:6719

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().