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.
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
Read up on the Samarians
Kevin Dowd edited a collection of case studies.
Panarchy:Read up on the Samarians
The Sumerians you mean?
I hear seashells are pretty hard to debase.
Why anarchy fails
"at all" is rather hard to get, but let's see...
Mises Wiki | Economic Resources and Books (search engine)
scineram: Kevin Dowd edited a collection of case studies.
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