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— Introduction on Currency Debasement and Inflation
— Roman Times
> Medieval Ages and the French Revolution
— German Hyperinflation
— 1970s to Today
A similar dynamic seems evident during Europe's medieval inflations, only now, the confused and vain effort to make sense of the enveloping turmoil saw the blame focus on suspected witches. The following chart shows the UK price index over the period with the incidence of witchcraft trials. Note the peak in trials coinciding with the peak of the price revolution.
Were the same dynamics at work during the French Revolution of 1789? The narrative of Madame Guillotine and her bloody role is well known. However, the execution of royalty by the Paris Commune didn.t begin until 1792, and the Reign of Terror in which Robespierre's Orwellian sounding "Committee of Public Safety" slaughtered 17,000 nobles and counterrevolutionaries didn.t start until well into 1793. In the words of guillotined revolutionary Georges Danton, this is when the French revolution .ate itself.. But the coincidence of these events to the monetary debasement is striking.
The political violence was justified in part by blaming nobles and counter-revolutionaries for galloping inflation in food prices. It saw "speculators. banned from trading gold, and prices for firewood, coal and grain became subject to strict controls. According to Andrew Dickson White, author of "Fiat Money Inflation in France", (echoing Keynes' remark that “wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery”) "economic calculation gave way to feverish speculation across the country".
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