War

Abstract

For much of the eighteenth century, Britons remarked on gold’s sordid uses by their European rivals in diplomacy and war; only after 1750 did they start criticizing such abuses by their own rulers. After 1789, constant French allusions to “Pitt’s gold” prompted most British observers to discount the same associations between gold and foreign policy that they had long taken for granted as truisms of history. During the war against Napoleon, when British gold in circulation and in banks fell from more than £40 million to around £3 million, subsidies continued to occupy an exaggerated position in rhetoric surrounding this drain. The major debate pitted those who claimed trade as the culprit and those who blamed an over-issue of Bank of England notes. The result in either case was the same: twenty years of living without guineas permanently altered Britons’ perception of that precious metal.