Currency Manipulation in the Middle Ages: The Case of Louis de Male, Count of Flanders

Abstract

It is well known that, in contrast to the nineteenth century, the Middle Ages, and especially the later Middle Ages, suffered from great coinage instability. Now that we, in our turn, are confronted with identical difficulties, some historians would explain the currency manipulations of the Middle Ages by motives of the same kind as those that have inspired some devaluations in the twentieth century. They ask themselves if perhaps the princes of that time were not trying, as some modern governments have tried, to influence economic life and in particular to stimulate international commerce by devaluation of the currency.