Cantitate/Preț
Produs
Total produse
Vezi coșul
All That Glittered: Britain's Most Precious Metal from Adam Smith to the Gold Rush de Timothy Alborn

All That Glittered: Britain's Most Precious Metal from Adam Smith to the Gold Rush

Autor Timothy Alborn
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 10 oct 2019

Analiza modului în care Marea Britanie a devenit singura putere mondială care a adoptat standardul aur ca fundament monetar exclusiv constituie tema centrală a acestei lucrări publicate de Oxford University Press. Timothy Alborn propune o perspectivă interdisciplinară asupra perioadei cuprinse între publicarea lucrării lui Adam Smith, „Avuția națiunilor”, și marile goane după aur din California și Australia, demonstrând cum acest metal a depășit sfera tehnică a finanțelor pentru a deveni un pilon al identității naționale.

Considerăm că forța acestui volum rezidă în capacitatea de a urmări circuitul aurului nu doar în seifurile băncilor, ci și în cheltuielile militare, ritualurile religioase și ierarhiile sociale reprezentate de familia regală și aristocrație. Apreciem rigoarea cu care autorul documentează contradicția britanică: deși elitele criticau alte națiuni pentru utilizarea ostentativă a aurului, acesta rămânea simbolul suprem al statutului și puterii imperiale la Londra. Structura narativă este una densă, academică, integrând descrieri contemporane ale valorii metalului cu evoluția instituțiilor financiare.

Cartea reprezintă o alternativă la Romanticism and the Gold Standard de A. Dick pentru cursurile de istorie economică sau studii imperiale, cu avantajul unei abordări mult mai vaste, care depășește sfera literară pentru a include dimensiunea politică și militară globală. În contextul operei sale anterioare, All That Glittered continuă preocupările lui Timothy Alborn pentru fundamentele societății britanice moderne, explorate anterior în Misers prin prisma comportamentului de economisire și moralitate, dar extinde acum analiza la nivel macroscopic, definind aurul ca motor al expansiunii imperiale.

Citește tot Restrânge

Preț: 26784 lei

Preț vechi: 34635 lei
-23%

Puncte Express: 402

Carte disponibilă

Livrare economică 07-13 mai

 Adaugă în coș

Wish list
Gift list
Am citit!
Adaugă în listă

Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780190603519
ISBN-10: 0190603518
Pagini: 276
Ilustrații: 22 halftones
Dimensiuni: 236 x 163 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.52 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această lucrare studenților și cercetătorilor interesați de istoria Marii Britanii și de mecanismele care au susținut hegemonia sa economică. Cititorul câștigă o înțelegere profundă a modului în care o decizie de politică monetară — standardul aur — a influențat cultura, religia și mândria națională britanică, oferind un context esențial pentru înțelegerea capitalismului modern și a expansiunii imperiale din secolul al XIX-lea.

Despre autor

Timothy Alborn este un istoric recunoscut pentru studiile sale asupra societății britanice din secolul al XIX-lea, cu un accent deosebit pe intersecția dintre economie, cultură și comportament social. Opera sa include volume precum Misers, unde explorează moralitatea economisirii, și lucrări de referință despre istoria asigurărilor de viață și a reuniunilor acționarilor britanici. Prin expertiza sa în „lungul secol al XIX-lea”, Alborn reușește să transforme subiecte economice aparent tehnice în analize culturale fascinante, fiind o voce autoritară în cadrul editurii Oxford University Press.

Descriere

During the century after 1750, Great Britain absorbed much of the world's supply of gold into its pockets, cupboards, and coffers when it became the only major country to adopt the gold standard as the sole basis of its currency. Over the same period, the nation's emergence was marked by a powerful combination of Protestantism, commerce, and military might, alongside preservation of its older social hierarchy. In this rich and broad-ranging work, Timothy Alborn argues for a close connection between gold and Britain's national identity. Beginning with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which validated Britain's position as an economic powerhouse, and running through the mid-nineteenth century gold rushes in California and Australia, Alborn draws on contemporary descriptions of gold's value to highlight its role in financial, political, and cultural realms. He begins by narrating British interests in gold mining globally to enable the smooth operation of the gold standard. In addition to explaining the metal's function in finance, he explores its uses in war expenditure, foreign trade, religious observance, and ornamentation at home and abroad. Britons criticized foreign cultures for their wasteful and inappropriate uses of gold, even as it became a prominent symbol of status in more traditional features of British society, including its royal family, aristocracy, and military. Although Britain had been ambivalent in its embrace of gold, ultimately it enabled the nation to become the world's most modern economy and to extend its imperial reach around the globe. All That Glittered tells the story of gold as both a marker of value and a valuable commodity, while providing a new window onto Britain's ascendance after the 1750s.

Recenzii

A praiseworthy feat, as much for Alborn's methods as for his results….The extensive inventory of digitized sources…is remarkable and may facilitate a new way of seeing the past….By design…Alborn's book reflects the interest of those Britons who wrote, read, and were written about when it came to gold….Alborn is skilled at navigating the cultural contradictions swirling about gold; he is also artful in choosing the term coinages…as a way to connect culture to commerce without getting lost in the details of politics or finance.
All That Glittered: Britain's Most Precious Metal from Adam Smith to the Gold Rush is a praiseworthy feat, as much for Alborn's methods as for his results. Over ten thousand sources were surveyed, scanned, and searched (with the assistance of ten Ph.D. students duly praised in the acknowledgments) to discover the multiple meanings of gold. The extensive inventory of digitized sources -- from gothic romances, travelogues, poems, and plays to currency pamphlets, encyclopedias, newspapers, and political polemics -- is remarkable and may facilitate a new way of seeing the past.
Deftly blending cultural and economic history...All That Glittered is a mining project in its own right. Online prospecting opened unexpected shafts, yet rather than dazzle with charts—there is one "word cloud"—Alborn spins the data into a seamless narrative spanning the 150-odd years between the Brazilian gold rush and the Californian and Australian gold rushes.
It is the thesis of Tim Alborn's remarkable All That Glittered that those British cities (and many others) became internationally hegemonic at the same time as (and perhaps because) their inhabitants rejected gold as a regular marker of social class. Britons idealized gold as the basis for their state monetary system while simultaneously rejecting its display by private individuals. Gold was somehow both the foundation of strong, lasting institutions and a possible indicator of deep moral failings....Too good a historian to force his materialAlborn freely admits tensions, complications, or counter-examples.
In All That Glittered, Timothy Alborn accomplishes that rare feat-a history that is at once finely grounded and spectacularly creative. This book recasts the geopolitics of gold, its monetary career, and its mesmerizing claim to define civilization itself.
Tim Alborn has a reputation as one of the most original historians of modern Britain, and All That Glittered yet again shows his ability to transform debates. His novel and imaginative approach to the culture of gold shows how it was castigated as useless adornment or praised laudable distinction, wasted in Iberian idlenessor used in British enterprise. These shifting and contested meanings are complemented by a subtle grasp of how Britain lost and obtained its gold through paying allies in war or by trade. Here is an impressive fusion of cultural and economic history, told with great insight and style.
A polished exploration of the debates over gold in the long eighteenth century, this book succeeds in transforming gold from a technical instrument of the fiscal-military state to a conducting medium for many of the sacred cows of British national identity. It is a dazzling example of the kind of explorations and analysis of the complexities of cultural value and exchange now possible through searchable historical corpora. Alborn's All That Glittered is a treasure trove of contemporary references and an unalloyed pleasure.

Notă biografică

Timothy Alborn is Professor of History at Lehman College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the author of Conceiving Companies: Joint-Stock Politics in Victorian England and Regulated Lives: Life Insurance and British Society, 1800-1914.