Gottfried Haberler: Review of Arthur R. Burns, Money and Monetary Policy in Early Times (1928)

Haberler’s review welcomes Burns’s synthesis of ancient monetary history as a contribution joining economic interpretation to historical scholarship. Its central judgment concerns the achievement of making predominantly numismatic evidence illuminate monetary institutions and policy:

An einem umfassenden Werk über die antike Geldgeschichte, das historisches Wissen und ökonomisches Verständnis vereinigt, hat es bisher gefehlt.

English translation: A comprehensive work on the monetary history of antiquity, one uniting historical knowledge with economic understanding, has hitherto been lacking.

The review moves from this appraisal and its evidentiary qualifications to a compressed account of monetary development, then closes by assessing the book’s organization. Burns’s geographical scope is European and western Asian, with occasional references to China; his chronology extends from the earliest historical records to the fifth century CE. Haberler emphasizes that evidence for legislation, governmental motives, and economic circumstances is exceptionally scarce, even for imperial Rome. Economic reconstruction therefore depends on surviving coins and incidental remarks by ancient writers. His praise recognizes both Burns’s interpretive resourcefulness and the limits imposed by these sources.

The historical sketch distinguishes the emergence of money from the substantially later invention of coinage. Once coinage became established, however, problems familiar to modern monetary economics appeared rapidly:

Nachdem sich aber ein halbwegs geordnetes Münzwesen einmal herausgebildet hatte, ergaben sich viele der uns vertrauten Geldprobleme in überraschend kurzer Zeit.

English translation: Once a tolerably well-ordered coinage system had formed itself, however, many of the monetary problems familiar to us arose within a surprisingly short time.

Haberler identifies bimetallism, monetary unions, sovereign control of minting, and fiscal debasement as early institutional developments. Greek city-states’ small size encouraged monetary unions, while the importance of foreign exchange constrained deliberate depreciation in their democratic polities. Monetary institutions thus appear through the interaction of political authority, fiscal incentives, and external constraints.

Der Mißbrauch des Geldschöpfungsmonopoles zu fiskalischen Zwecken durch Inflation mittels Münzverschlechterung dürfte bereits eine Erfindung der griechischen Tyrannen sein.

English translation: The abuse of the monopoly of money creation for fiscal purposes through inflation by means of debasement of the coinage would appear to be already an invention of the Greek tyrants.

The tentative formulation matters: Haberler presents an inference about ancient policy, not direct documentary proof. His account culminates in Roman inflation, especially the prolonged debasement under Nero and his successors, which disrupted coinage and brought a return to gold currency valued by weight before bimetallism was restored in the fourth century. He separately treats token money as a response to the need for convenient small change, stressing its practical restriction to low denominations.

The closing appraisal praises Burns’s thematic chapters, geographical subdivisions, chapter summaries, and concluding overview. These arrangements make a substantial body of evidence usable, moving from pre-coinage exchange through minting privileges, materials, standards, denominations, and token coinage to monetary policy. The review’s significance lies in its concise presentation of ancient money as an economic and institutional problem: coins become evidence for reconstructing policy, while the scarcity of testimony remains a persistent qualification.