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2 years ago in Material Culture By Raghu
I’m exploring material culture and empire. Are there academic studies specifically examining how ideological propaganda was expressed through the design and use of colonial coinage?
Coins are ubiquitous, state-issued objects. For my project on symbolic sovereignty, I need to find work that decodes colonial coin iconography. How did figures, text, and heraldry on coins communicate imperial authority, racial hierarchies, or economic domination? Are there key scholars who have done this for the British, French, or Spanish empires, perhaps comparing metropole and colonial issues?
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By Shobha Answered 1 year ago
Yes, this is a rich interdisciplinary field. You should start with Catherine Eagleton's "Munitions of the Mind" and her work on the British Empire, which brilliantly links coin design to narratives of civilization and resource extraction. For the French empire, "The Coinage of the French Colonies" by John S. Davenport provides a catalog, while articles in the Journal of the Colonialism and Colonial History often analyze iconography. Key scholars to follow include Tracey L. Adams on Spanish-American coinage and Gustav Visser on the geopolitical messaging in colonial South African coinage. I'd recommend searching the Royal Numismatic Society's publications and the journal Numismatic Chronicle for case studies that decode how coins materialized ideologies of conquest and subjugation.
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