The Changing Color of Money:European Currency Iconography and Collective Id... Jacques E C Hymans European Journal of International Relations;Mar 2004;10,1:ABI/INFORM Global pg.5 The Changing Color of Money:European Currency Iconography and Collective Identity JACQUES E.C.HYMANS Smith College This article investigates currency iconography as an indicator of the content of collective identities in Europe.Using an original database of the human figures on European paper money since the 19th century, the article finds a combination of iconographic similarity across space and iconographic difference across time.This finding suggests that rather than using the currency to indoctrinate the public with a set of spccifically national values,European state clites have traditionally tried to use the currency to enhance their public legitimacy by embracing the values currently fashionable in pan-European society.The article then draws out the implications of this argument for understanding the iconography of the euro and the prospects for a European 'demos'. KEY WORDS◆European monetary unification◆iconography◆ identity◆international norms◆noney◆values 1.Introduction A descriptive analysis of banknotes is needed.The unlimited satirical force of such a book would be equaled only by its objectivity.For nowhere more naively than in these documents does capitalism display itself in solemn earnest.(Walter Benjamin,quoted in Taylor,1992:143) Much of the literature on national identity construction portrays it as a process involving conscious efforts by state elites to inculcate the mass public with values likely to serve state interests,such as the honor and distinctive- ness of the nation and the dignity of those who sacrifice their lives in its cause (see,e.g.Gellner,1983;Hobsbawm,1990).Recently,social scientists European Journal of International Relations Copyright 2004 SAGE Publications and ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research,Vol.10(1):5-31 D0L:10.1177/1354066104040567] Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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European Journal of International Relations 10(1) and historians have begun to extend this 'state as pedagogue'perspective to the case of the construction of national currencies in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Gilbert and Helleiner,1999).Money would indeed seem a perfect site on which the state could construct a 'banal nationalism'that is all the more powerful for being part of the seemingly unremarkable fabric of everyday life (Billig,1995).It has the potential to be an especially effective pedagogical tool because while many people simply have little taste for military parades or for education,everybody wants money. The present article proposes an alternative to the 'state as pedagogue' perspective on the uses of currency iconography.This article starts from the contention that,to paraphrase Brecht,few governments have the temerity to try to dissolve the people and elect another one.In other words,far from trying to use their control of currency to impose statist values on a recalcitrant citizenry,states are more likely to try to increase their legitimacy by using the currency to signal their embrace of values in tune with the 'spirit of the times'. To test this contention,the article introduces an original,comprehensive database of the images on paper money from the 15 current European Union(EU)states since the 19th century.This database shows,contrary to conventional theoretical expectations,that statist and martial images are hardly indispensable elements of currency iconography.In fact,it shows that iconographic evolution,not stasis,has been the norm for European national currencies since the beginning.This evolution has reflected broader shifts in societal values that have been identified by scholars such as Ronald Inglehart and John Meyer.The database further shows that while the underlying values expressed in currency iconography have evolved greatly across time, they have tended to show little variation across European countries at any one point in time.The same types of images appear from France to Finland. The combination of iconographic similarity across space and iconographic difference across time suggests that European states have indeed been less likely to try to use their control of currency to indoctrinate their publics,and more likely to try to use the values fashionable in pan-European society to enhance the legitimacy of their currency and of themselves.This finding implies the need not only to rethink the relative weights social scientists typically attribute to state and society in processes of collective identity construction,but also the practical possibility for the growth of a real European 'demos'. Beyond the specific issue of money,the database introduced here could also prove more broadly useful as a descriptive indicator of overall trends in the content of collective identities,while such indicators have been in short supply.2 There are at least three reasons why studying currency iconography is an excellent means of taking the measure of overall identity content.First, 6 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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Hymans:The Changing Color of Money in contrast to the many sui generis aspects of national cultures,at least since the late 19th century nearly every state has undertaken the issue of legal tender.There is thus ample room for cross-national comparison.Second, unlike postage stamps for instance,money must be instantly recognizable to all citizens,as well as internationally,and thus states have to prioritize particular images rather than multiplying such images ad nauset.Third, unlike flags and anthems for instance(see Cerulo,1995),new banknotes are regularly issued,both because inflation requires new denominations and- even in the absence of inflation -because forgers are constantly working to defeat the existing notes'security features.The requirement of regular updating of banknotes means that their design at any one point in time reflects not mere inertia but rather a relatively contemporaneous,conscious choice.This probably unique combination of universality,selectivity and regular updating makes currency iconography an ideal avenue to assess the content of nation-state,and now EU,identities. The article is organized as follows.Section 2 lays out in more detail the theoretical case for a secular evolution in currency iconography.Section 3 shows the merits of this hypothesis through a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of over a century of European paper money.Section 4 then suggests the implications of this study for the interpretation of the new curo banknotes and for the possibility of the birth of a European 'demos'. 2.The Nature of Currency Iconography:Static or Evolving? As noted above,the conventional hypothesis on the nature of currency iconography has been that pedagogically minded states would use the issuance of money to foist their cherished,specifically national,values on the captive public.For instance,Emily Gilbert and Eric Helleiner have written, Policymakers recognized that currencies could act as important carriers of nationalist imagery,particularly if their supply were monopolized....Policy- makers inspired by nationalist thinking took full advantage of advances in printing technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to provide detailed imagery of their vision of the nation on their coins and notes.(Gilbert and Helleiner,1999:8) Gilbert and Helleiner and their co-authors marshal much case study evidence to bolster this claim-though,significantly as we shall see below, much of it comes from a small number of British Commonwealth and North American cases. An alternative,equally plausible but heretofore unexamined hypothesis on the identity-currency connection starts from the notion that the state is rarely secure,powerful and motivated enough to force-feed its values on its 7 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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European Journal of International Relations 10(1) citizenry.States'legitimacy claims are especially important-and especially fragile -in the matter of money,whose value utterly depends on the general public's willingness to suspend disbelief and accept the alchemical process by which the state turns paper into gold (Carruthers and Babb, 1996).Moreover,states seek legitimacy not only domestically but interna- tionally as well.The alternative hypothesis,then,is that in a bid for contemporary relevance and legitimacy,the state will select currency iconography that reflects the transnational spirit of the times. What sorts of iconographic shifts might reflect this desire to give currency'to the currency?Ronald Inglehart and John Meyer are two main proponents in the social sciences of cultural shift'theories-theories that argue that with the passage of time,certain ideas and values have risen and fallen internationally (Inglehart,1997;Meyer et al.,1997).Although Inglehart and Meyer use different language and methods in elaborating their theories,there is clearly a family resemblance in the shifts they describe First,Inglehart and Meyer can both be said to trace an overall trend toward the dispersion of legitimate social power and initiative-from the state to society,and then to the individual.Second,Inglehart and Meyer can both be said to trace an overall trend in the perceived meaning or goals of life from the devotion to tradition,to the modern quest for material goods,and then to the post-materialist and/or postmodern idea that the journey is at least as important as the destination.3 How might we observe the impact of these broad values trends on money?One need only glance at any banknote to recognize how dense a network of symbols and ideas money can contain,and moreover how sophisticated a student of a given national culture one needs to be in order to grasp the significance of these various choices.It is clearly impossible for any one scholar to have this depth of knowledge about all the nations of Europe,much less be able to synthesize the rich detail into general conclusions.Therefore,this project does not focus on the details of the iconographic choices that may have inflamed societal passions at any one moment in time.Rather,it looks for broader shifts in the basic parameters of the choices being made.This strategy,apart from making possible a study of wide temporal and geographical scope,allows us to focus on the big identity picture rather than narrower factional cleavages.For instance,Maurice Agulhon and Pierre Bonte have meticulously traced the great 19th century debates in France over the symbol of the French Republic,'Marianne', notably whether she should be depicted wearing a Phrygian bonnet and whether one of her breasts should be exposed (Agulhon and Bonte,1992). The debates were heated,but in the long sweep of history,the left-right conflict they reflected was not as deep a philosophical split as people thought at the time.In wider historical perspective,it becomes clear that the two 6 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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Hymans:The Changing Color of Money sides'worldviews actually had much in common.Similarly,in the icono- graphic domain,what this study would emphasize in the case of'Marianne' is that around 1870 a national consensus developed to depict France as a young woman donning classical robes. At this level of abstraction,the predictions of an Inglehart-Meyer perspective in the currency iconography area would be as follows.On one axis,in line with the Inglehart-Meyer observation of the dispersion of social initiative,we would expect a shift from depictions of actual or metaphorical actors who embody the state,to depictions of societal actors such as economic classes,and finally to depictions of individual,non-state actors.On the other axis,in line with the Inglehart-Meyer observation on the changing goals of life,we would expect a shift from depictions of godlike or ornamental figures in classical or antique garb (a reflection of traditionalist life goals),to depictions of figures involved in the 'real world'of politics, economics and social struggles (a reflection of materialist life goals),and finally to depictions of figures from a concrete time period engaged in the cultural or scientific pursuits (a reflection of post-materialist life goals). Table I suggests examples of the kinds of images that might reflect different positions along the two Inglehart-Meyer axes,with examples from the American case.The Inglehart-Meyer point of view would expect that over time,the bulk of images on currency would move down the diagonal from left to right.By contrast,the traditional 'state as pedagogue'idea would expect that there would be little change in iconography over time, with the bulk of the images falling in the top row of the table. 3.Iconography of European National Currencies Over Time The Database To test the hypotheses,I created a database of human figures on European paper money from the onset of national central banks in the 19th century to the present day.The creation of this database was possible thanks to a numismatic publication,the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money,which offers detailed descriptions and,in most cases,reproduces images of the banknotes (Pick et al.,1994;Bruce and Shafer,2001). Three notes are in order about the range of data collected for this project. First,the work has focused on the currencies of the current 15 members of the EU (plus East Germany).The work could easily be followed up with similar studies of other states and regions,however.Second,the work has started by focusing on paper money,but a study of coinage could be a natural complement to this work.Third,the work has focused on depictions of human figures.This choice results from two primary factors-first,the 9 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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European Journal of International Relations 10(1) Table 1 Possible Iconographic Choices Goal Post-Materialist Actor Traditional Materialist (or Post-Modern) State State symbols in Historical heads Representatives of classical/antique of state,generals, 'official culture' garb,classical other statesmen (e.g.Francis Scott gods (e.g.Athena,(e.g.George Key,Edward ‘Columbia),or Washington, Teller) purely ornamental Douglas figures MacArthur) Society/Classes Classical/antique Imagery of real- Imagery of real- imagery of mass, world mass,class, world mass,class, class,sector or sector or region sector or region region representatives at representatives at representatives work (e.g.farmers play (e.g.kids (e.g.allegorical in the fields) playing baseball) figures 'Industry', 'commerce'） Individual Historical non- Historical non- Historical non- state actors from state actors who state actors who classical/antique made significant made significant era or social or contributions to representations of economic the sciences or individual-level contributions the arts and virtues (e.g. (e.g.Margaret letters (e.g.Albert Aristotle,St Paul, Sanger,Henry Einstein,Charles 'Faith') Ford) Ives,Herman Melville) obvious centrality of human figures in currency iconography over time(the uninhabited scenes in the euro are a clear anomaly to this tradition,to be discussed in Section 4),and second,the relative ease of identification and interpretation of such human figures-a necessary component of a project covering many decades and countries.The decision to focus on human figures at this stage of the research should not,however,be taken to imply that they are the only interesting or relevant aspects of currency iconography for the overall theoretical issues spelled out above.Rather,the human figures simply serve as a reasonable proxy for the overall message of the banknotes they grace. 10 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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Hymans:The Changing Color of Money The database built on the basis of the Standard Catalog data can be described as follows.For the current EU 15 plus East Germany,I collected information on all regular,mass-produced,central bank-issued banknotes (not Treasury Bills or other interest-bearing notes).I made a separate entry in the database for each banknote that has a separate catalog entry number in the Standard Catalog.+I recorded separately every human figure(named and unnamed)on the front or back of the notes.5 Then I located biographical information about any named individuals pictured on the banknotes,including their historical importance and date of birth.This work was greatly facilitated by a massive online biographical index (Inter- nationaler Biographischer Index,1999).Thanks to this and other sources,I currently lack identifying biographical information for only 15 images(14 different historical figures),mostly from Spain and Portugal from around the turn of the 20th century. The database covers 1368 separate banknotes from the 15 current EU member states plus East Germany.Of those 1368 separate banknotes,1174 depict human figures.On the 1174 banknotes with human figures,I counted 1424 such human figures.Of these,I was able to track down the biographical data for 1409 of them,and it is these 1409 images that serve as the key data set for my empirical analysis.The 194 banknotes without human figures mainly come from one of three sources-the period before 1920 when many central bank printing facilities were still in their infancy, the German hyperinflationary period of the 1920s and 1930s,or very small denominations. Table 2 breaks down these totals by country,noting also the start date of each banknote series in the data set.The far-right hand column is the key one;it represents the set of 1424 images that form the basic data set on which I perform my analysis.This includes many banknotes with only very slight differences between them.But it may surprise those expecting iconographic stickiness'to note that in most countries iconographic change has been more common than iconographic stasis.Overall,out of the 1424 images in the data set,846 or 59%depict a different person than the previous note at the same denomination.There is variation across countries on this score,but in the data set only Great Britain has had a strong tendency to issue new banknotes featuring the same human figures as before.Apart from Great Britain's 15%score on this measure,no other country scores lower than 34%,and only two,Ireland and Sweden,score lower than 40%.Thus it would appear that there is little if any inherent obstacle to iconographic change.Given this finding,even if the imagery does not change it is reasonable to assume that this stasis was the result of a conscious choice. 11 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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European Journal of International Relations 10(1) Table 2 Country-by-Country Summary of Banknotes in Data Set No.with Total Human Country Starting Date No.of Human Figures Banknotes Figures Austria 1825 115 104 123 Belgium 1851 75 75 98 Denmark 1875 55 40 43 Finland 1922 77 48 50 France 1800 98 91 118 GDR 1948 27 12 12 Germany 1876 157 99 120 (incl.FRG) Great Britain 1855 134 132 153 Greece 1841 100 96 129 Ireland 1928 44 44 79 Italy 1896 70 70 74 Luxembourg 1929 16 16 16 Netherlands 1904 64 48 53 Portugal 1847 120 115 125 Spain 1874 151 135 147 Sweden 1874 65 49 84 Totals 1368 1174 1424 Testing the Hypotheses I coded the images on banknotes along the two Meyer/Inglehart-inspired axes-locus of actorhood and nature of goals.The basic coding scheme follows the examples from Table 1.In this section I first present the overall statistical results,and then I discuss those results. Before proceeding to the results,however,I should note some important coding decisions.Two decisions in particular had a significant effect on the overall results-the decisions to code purely ornamental human figures and classical gods as depicting state actorhood.The reasons for these decisions are as follows.In the case of ornamental figures,they are ornamenting state- produced banknotes that themselves are a symbol of state.6 Meanwhile, classical gods,as the rulers of the universe,clearly evoke the functions of state.?There were other coding ambiguities as well,but these were essentially irrelevant to the overall contours of the results.8 Table 3 answers the question of whether there has been secular change in the types of actors depicted in currency images.The results are shown in 12 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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Hymans:The Changing Color of Money Table 3 A Secular Change in the Locus of Actorhood? Actor Epoch of Currency Issue State Society Individual Total N Pre-1920 418 49 56 523 (80%) (9%) (11%) (100%) 1920-49 255 171 51 477 (53%) (36%) (11%) (100%) 1950-79 116 39 101 256 (45%) (15%) (39%) (100%) 1980-on 53 11 89 153 (35%) (7%) (58%) (100%) Total N 842 270 297 1409 (60%) (19%) (21%) (100%) Pearson's chi-squared (6):364.808;p =0.000 terms of four 30-year periods.The utility of this periodization was identified inductively.This table shows that indeed there has been a secular shift from the state to the individual as the locus of actorhood.Depictions of the state start out clearly dominant in the pre-1920 period and subsequently decline smoothly.Beginning around 1920 there is a boom in depictions of society; this then fades away after around 1950 with the dramatic rise of depictions of individuals.The results of the chi-squared test show that we can reject the null hypothesis that the row and column data are unrelated. Table 4 answers the question of whether there has been a secular change in the nature of goals depicted by currency images.This table shows that indeed there has been a secular shift.The use of classical images(represent- ing traditional goals)starts out dominant and then gradually vanishes into thin air.The use of historical images(representing materialist goals)begins strongly in the 1920s;it subsequently holds its ground in percentage terms down to the present day.This persistence represents a minor anomalous finding for the 'cultural shift'hypothesis,which would expect representa- tions of materialist goals to decline in the more recent period.Meanwhile the use of cultural images (representing post-materialist goals)begins strongly in the 1950s and then soars in the current period.The results of the chi-squared test show that we can reject the null hypothesis that the row and column data are unrelated. 13 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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European Journal of International Relations 10(1) Table 4 A Secular Change in the Nature of Life Goals? Goal Post- Epoch of Traditional Materialist Materialist Currency Issue (Classical) (Historical) (Cultural) Total N Pre-1920 402 91 30 523 (77%) (17%) (6%) (100%) 1920-49 239 211 27 477 (50%) (44%) (6%) (100%) 1950-79 45 131 80 256 (18%) (51%) (31%) (100%) 1980-on 3 69 81 153 (2%) (45%) (53%) (100%) Total N 689 502 218 1409 (49%) (36%) (15%) (100%) Pearson's chi-squared (6):525.726;p-0.000 As might be expected given the preceding results,the two key axes Meyer and Inglehart identify-the locus of actorhood and the nature of goals- work in tandem.In all,65%of images depicting the state also feature classical themes;56%of images depicting society also feature historical themes;and 69%of images depicting individuals also feature cultural themes.Overall,61%of the images are located down the left-to-right diagonal of Table 1,while a Cohen's kappa test shows that only 39%would have been expected there from random chance.The probability of this relationship occurring by chance is 0,and the kappa score is 0.41. Overall,the cultural shift'hypothesis is strongly supported by these findings.A qualitative look at the data also reinforces this conclusion.Here I offer a holistic appreciation;the interested reader can also consult the appendix to this article,which reprints images of Dutch banknotes to show the 'cultural shift'as it played out in that case (which is also discussed in Section 4 later). Consider some of the more popular images from different epochs: In the period before 1920,popular images include mythical female symbols of states in flowing robes,such as Great Britain's 'Britannia'(78 images),Sweden's 'Svea'(22 images),Germany's'Germania'(18 images), Austria's 'Austria'(13 images),Italy's 'Italia'and 'Roma'(3 images)and Portugal's 'Lusitania'(1 image).Also making a strong showing are 14 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission
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