Currency: Did you mean...?

Colonial American currency was a work in progress from the time of the earliest English settlements of the 1600s until the United States of America minted its own money in 1783. The monetary system was far from standardized...

A cast brass manilla from Nigeria, used as a currency in the kingdom of Benin (13th-19th century CE) and other West African states. Width: 6 cms. (British Museum, London)

The assignat was a paper bill issued by France between 1789 and 1796, during the French Revolution (1789-1799). First issued in the form of bonds, the assignat was meant to stimulate France's economy as a quick means to pay off national...

Where did paper money come from? Despite it seeming like a modern invention, its origins go back to Ancient China. And, despite it now being hard to think of a world without paper money, in...

Shays' Rebellion (1786-87) was an armed insurrection by rural farmers in western and central Massachusetts, sparked by the state government's unpopular response to a debt crisis. The insurrection reached its climax when the rebels...

The Parson's Cause was a legal and political controversy that arose in the British colony of Virginia in the early 1760s. In response to the royal veto of the Two Penny Act, a policy passed by Virginia's House of Burgesses, a young...

Ptolemaic Egypt rapidly established itself as an economic powerhouse of the ancient world at the end of the 4th century BCE. The wealth of Egypt was owed in large part to the unrivalled fertility of the Nile, which...

The French Directory, or Directorate (French: le Directoire), was the government of France from 2 November 1795 until 9 November 1799, a period that spanned the last four years of the French Revolution (1789-1799). The Directory...

Copper was probably the first metal used by ancient cultures, and the oldest artefacts made with it date to the Neolithic period. The shiny red-brown metal was used for jewellery, tools, sculpture, bells, vessels, lamps, amulets...

The coinage of ancient Korea (pre-13th century CE) first employed Chinese coins, known locally as the oshuchon. Korean rulers began minting their own metal coins from the late 10th century CE, first in copper and iron, and...