Research project

Reevaluating Conceptions of Imperial Monetary Flow: New Methodologies and Frameworks

This project suggests a reconceptualisation on of pre- and non-capitalist imperial monetary policy, arguing that the existing literature about imperial financial flows has unnecessarily privileged ideas of largesse and seemingly chaotic monetary distribution. Using the divergent cases of the Roman Empire and the Soviet Union, however, this project argues that by tracking existing monetary flows (in the form of issued coinage in the Roman Imperial period and tax balance sheets in the Soviet 1970s-1980s), a more complex picture appears. This new framework for imperial monetary policy includes clear intentionality and directed investment, problematising the existing literature and expanding knowledge about how financial flows and monetary policy have been directed in imperial contexts

Duration

2024 - 2030

Contact

Liesbeth Claes

Funding

Starting Grant NWO

Related research

• Reevaluating Conceptions of Imperial Monetary Flow: New Methodologies and Frameworks
  • Coin streams within the Roman West (AD 83-138)
  • Financial flows to/from Soviet Central Asia, 1950-1990

• central asia
• coinage and money
• roman empire
• soviet union