From Ore to Money, Mining Trading, Minting, Proceedings of the Tallinn (2018) conference

This volume is the proceeding of a workshop held in cooperation with the Estonian History Museum and the Institute of History, Archaeology and Art History of Tallinn University, 5-7 September 2018 in Tallinn, Estonia. In order to make coins, metal was first needed. Besides gold and silver, copper has also been significantly used as coinage metal of lesser value. Many countries did not have their own metal resources for a long time and were completely dependent on exports. Thus, all coinage metals had to be transported from producers to end users. At this point, merchants took over. The bigger the economy, the bigger its need for money. The attitudes of nations towards their monetary policy have been extremely diverse. Whereas England tried to sustain silver coinage, Sweden and Spain minted mainly pure copper in the 17th century. The heavy, inconvenient coins and increasing expenditures caused the introduction of paper money in Europe. The 18th–19th century saw the triumph of copper coinage and paper money almost everywhere. On the other hand, monetary systems were based on gold and silver standards. Problems concerning bimetallism and the changing values of its components occurred. The aim of the conference was to trace the path of the minting of coins from mining to the issuance of fresh coins from mints. There are, indeed, estimations about the scope of mining, trading and minting, as well as a general understanding about the processes that took place. However, many details remain unclear and require a closer consideration.