The establishment of the gold standard in Southeast Europe: convergence to a new system or divergence from an old one

The establishment of the Bulgarian monetary system, as that of other newborn Southeast European states, occurred at a time in which the very meaning of money was being redefined at an international level, with the establishment of the gold standard. The homologation of the Balkan “periphery” to the West European “center” occurred thus at a time in which the relations between center and periphery were undergoing a radical change. In fact, the relations between different economic spaces, between center and periphery, between domestic and foreign trade, depend crucially on the peculiar form taken by the monetary regime: different monetary regimes design different relations between internal and external money, and hence between domestic economy and foreign trade. Should the diffusion of the gold standard be read univocally as the establishment of an age of gold out of an age of darkness? Or is it better understood as the transition from a secular age of gold and silver to a precarious age of gold? The purpose of this paper is to reinterpret this story in the light of the system that preceded it, namely the bimetallic system that had characterized European economies over the previous five centuries. In a historical and comparative perspective, the monetary history of Bulgaria, as that of other neighboring countries, appears not as a necessary, however troubled, convergence towards the ultimate and universal gold standard, but rather as an undecided, and therefore troubled, option between two historically alternative monetary standards, bimetallic and monometallic, each with its own advantages and drawbacks.