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.Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission