Abstract
Rebecca L Spang writes about the history of French money during the Revolution, and especially the assignats (a form of paper money). A major contribution of this work is its questioning of the difference between the main categories of history (social, economic, cultural, political history, etc.) and thus the way to address some specific issues (p. 272). For example, coins and money are generally classified in economic history, and the author critically evaluates the relevance of such a distinction (p. 13). The author then proposes a political history of money issue to show how we can understand money as a political object.
In the introduction, the author rejects most of the economic historical approach of money as the various theories (classical, neo-classical, Keynesian, Marxists) define money with some overly simple categories. On the contrary, the author proposes to denaturalize these categories and to show their roots. As is explained in the introduction, “one goal of this book is to look at money, rather than through it, and thereby to make it both less invisible and more historical” (p. 3).
The book follows a chronological order. The first chapter (pp. 19–56) discusses the end of the Old Regime in France and gives an interpretation of the French economic situation before the beginning of the Revolution. The book then gives some insights about practices of debts in the Old Regime and explains why in the author’s view (and contrary to the mainstream) these debts cannot be seen as a cause of the French Revolution (p. 56).
The two following chapters are about the history of the French assignats. The second chapter is the political history of the assignats (pp. 57–96) and the third chapter (pp. 97–134) is a history of the daily uses of money. Within these chapters, the author details the dissemination of the belief in assignats from the national level to the daily uses. It offers the reader a link between a political and a social history.
The next two chapters offer insights about the consequences of this new money: the fourth chapter (pp. 135–168) deals with the economic consequences of assignats, the fifth chapter (pp. 169–209) is about civil wars.
The final two chapters conclude the book, with chapter 7 (pp. 247–270) offering a discussion about the end of the French Revolution. For Rebecca L Spang, the shift between the Revolution and the nineteenth century does not seem so clear when compared with other economic historians of France.
The book is not really focused on accounting history as such, but rather on a new way to understand economic history. As an accounting historian, I suggest there are two main ways to derive an appreciation of such a book.
The first is about the history of valuation in general and especially valuation in accounting. Research about French bankruptcies (see Coquery and Praquin, 2008) shows a shift between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the eighteenth century, it was common to use a list of accounts without valuation. This was not the case during the nineteenth century, however, as balance sheets were presented with a valuation. In that respect, we can read this book as a way to understand the growing role played by money in society and so in accounting history.
The author explains, “while social historians of the Revolution have paid attention to money, they have treated it merely as a quantitative measure. Throughout much of the 1790s (and beyond), however, money’s qualities mattered as much as its quantities” (p. 172). So, we can understand why the valuation process was not really important in the eighteenth century, why a simple list of goods without valuation in inventories during the Old Regime may have been preferred, and the belief in money was thus not so important. After the Revolution and the construction of the nation in the nineteenth century, however, the belief in money was more important.
The second way for accounting historians to appreciate this book relates to the way we understand accounting history. Rebecca L Spang gives us some insights about a new (and more global) way to understand an economic object. It is quite common today to write that research in accounting history is not only a technical practice but is also part of a political and social history. We can therefore read this book as a history of belief in money. It opens an avenue for future research on the history of belief and trust, as money, and the accounting of it, is part of our modern trust in the institution of capitalism.