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This article investigates currency iconography as an indicator of the content of collective identities in Europe. Using an original database of the human figures on European paper money since the 19th century, the article finds a combination of iconographic similarity across space and iconographic difference across time. This finding suggests that rather than using the currency to indoctrinate the public with a set of specifically national values, European state elites have traditionally tried to use the currency to enhance their public legitimacy by embracing the values currently fashionable in pan-European society. The article then draws out the implications of this argument for understanding the iconography of the euro and the prospects for a European 'demos'.
KEY WORDS * European monetary unification * iconography* identity * international norms * money * values
1. Introduction
A descriptive analysis of banknotes is needed. The unlimited satirical force of such a book would be equaled only by its objectivity. For nowhere more naively than in these documents does capitalism display itself in solemn earnest. (Walter Benjamin, quoted in Taylor, 1992: 143)
Much of the literature on national identity construction portrays it as a process involving conscious efforts by state elites to inculcate the mass public with values likely to serve state interests, such as the honor and distinctiveness of the nation and the dignity of those who sacrifice their lives in its cause (see, e.g. Gellner, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1990). Recently, social scientists and historians have begun to extend this `state as pedagogue' perspective to the case of the construction of national currencies in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Gilbert and Helleiner, 1999). Money would indeed seem a perfect site on which the state could construct a `banal nationalism' that is all the more powerful for being part of the seemingly unremarkable fabric of everyday life (Billig, 1995). It has the potential to be an especially effective pedagogical tool because while many people simply have little taste for military parades or for education, everybody wants money.
The present article proposes an alternative to the `state as pedagogue' perspective on the uses of currency iconography.' This article starts from the contention that, to paraphrase Brecht, few governments have the temerity to try to dissolve the people and elect another...