Are there any historical examples of market currencies not being interfered with by government at all? Any good articles written on this subject?
There has always been currency debasement, inflation, and devaluation in some form.
Spanish kings had the habit of melting coins, adding impurities, and reminting them as artificially overvalued coins.
Even at the most minimal interference, a monopoly on minting made huge profits for monarchs.
Nothing???
I have yet to read a good, dedicated history of money. I own two, but neither are very good. I’ve been interested in the early history of money myself, but I figure that to get a good picture I will have to look in non-economic textbooks of early civilizations.
There is the Independent Treasury System of the U.S in the 1840s and 1850s. It lasted from the end of the Second Bank of the U.S. until the Civil War, when the federal government began issuing greenbacks. It wasn’t entirely free, but is the closest thing I know of.
I’d say the “Free Banking” in Scotland several hundred years ago, but the problem with that is they couldn’t issue anything less than a 1 pound note, with is something like 100 USD today, not exactly able to be used for day-to-day exchange, I know there was a book I read that brought this up.. “End the Fed” maybe?
pre-civilized, aggrarian societies? That’s a good one. I would like to find out myself.
Read up on the Samarians
Kevin Dowd edited a collection of case studies.
The Sumerians you mean?
I hear seashells are pretty hard to debase.
“at all” is rather hard to get, but let’s see…
- There is for example the episode with private producers of small change coins in 18th century England, where the market jumped in to solve government failure. (Look up Selgin’s Good Money and associated articles - one good summary is inside of this article).
- I’ve read somewhere, that the very successful florin was originally produced by Italian merchants for their own needs. (Sadly I miss the source now, does anyone have one?)
- The Greek city states had each their own coinage. There was an active trade in these currencies, and debasement was rare in Greek history. On the contrary, there are cases of actually raising the standard of the coinage for the greater prestige which a coinage of high intrinsic value seemed to offer.
- The United States allowed for a long time the circulation of foreign gold coins, until they were outlawed in 1857.
How do I print this book? The page is in another language.
It is my impression that, during the Middle Ages in feudal Europe, sound money was fairly prevalent. Merchant trade was largely self-regulating which meant that any individual sovereign would have faced a huge hurdle in trying to manipulate money. There were some powerful monarchs - including the Pope - but nobody really had control of Europe, as a whole. Good luck debasing money over a territory which you do not control.
Clayton -
A striking case is the dinar, a coin of the Saracens in Spain. The dinar originally consisted of sixty-five gold grains, when first coined at the end of the seventh century. The Saracens were notably sound in monetary matters, and by the middle of the twelfth century, the dinar was still sixty grains. At that point, the Christian kings conquered Spain, and by the early thirteenth century, the dinar (now called maravedi) was reduced to fourteen grains. Soon the gold coin was too light to circulate, and it was converted into a silver coin weighing twenty-six grains of silver. This, too, was debased, and by the mid-fifteenth century, the maravedi was only 1.5 silver grains, and again too small to circulate. [7]
[7] On debasement, see Elgin Groseclose, Money and Man (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961), pp. 57-76.
What has government done to our money? Murray Rothbard
"It is my impression that, during the Middle Ages in feudal Europe, sound money was fairly prevalent. Merchant trade was largely self-regulating which meant that any individual sovereign would have faced a huge hurdle in trying to manipulate money. There were some powerful monarchs - including the Pope - but nobody really had control of Europe, as a whole. Good luck debasing money over a territory which you do not control.
Clayton -"
Actually, inflations were far from uncommon in the old times and the tool of choice to finance wars, besides debts and taxes, which were rarely easy to get. A king would rule over his land, where his coins could be imposed on the population - a prime target for inflation. The more skilled rulers could even inflate in territories they did not control (see Frederick the Great and the Seven Year War).
jmorris84: Twas simply the wrong Google language 
Here’s a simplified URL: http://books.google.com/books?id=ihcOAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover
The Byzantine nomisma was remarkable for its stability: for over two centuries and a half it carried exactly the same weight in gold and could always purchase the same quantity of flour except, of course, during serious famines. It was finally debased in 1077 by Michael VII Ducas, nicknamed Parapinaces (“minus one quarter”) for reasons that are very easy to understand.
One of the first measures taken by Alexius I Comnenos when he took power in 1081 was to return the nomisma to its old content in gold.
Mind that this monetary politics was all aimed at increasing tax revenues: ever since the days of Leo the Wise there were only two ways to pay taxes in the Empire. By military service or by gold coins. That’s why Byzantium, even in its darkest hours, always seemed to possess an amount of gold to bribe enemies or hire mercenaries that no Frankish Emperor or Muslim Sultan could even dream of.