Ranging from medieval times when gold was the only currency, to modern times until the currency was pegged against the gold standard, how good/bad was the economy?
Was there any inflation? If so, how did it occur without artificial manipulation of the economy.
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The history of pre-modern economies were generally terrible. Until the 1800s, an “economy” was basically agriculture with more than 90% of the people being employed either directly or one step away from agriculture. Economies were therefore “what ever the weather allowed you to grow that year/month/season”. Boom and bust – hunger and malnutrition were common outcomes.
This is, in no small part, why colonialization and imperial conquests were common. A country’s economy was pretty much how much land and how fertile that land was that it could control.
Gold, silver and barter trade were how exchanges were made. But currencies were not the driving force of the economy as it is today. And gold wasn’t even the biggest nor most standard form of currency.
Today, we hear of these nostalgic longings for some kind of gold standard or commodity based currency. It is wishful, romantic thinking far from any sort of historic reality. The golden period of human civilization is today. Anything before 1900 would be periods of malnutrition, high infant mortality (about 20x higher), short average life times (about half of today’s), diseases.
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