The Great Debasement and English overseas trade

Gresham and Johnson in context

Bibliographic Data

ID8852767
AuthorsLing‐fan Li (Department of Economics National Tsing Hua University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-01-29
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Economic History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ehr.70099
OpenAlexW7126042767
LanguageEN
References cited15

On the basis of price data collected from Gresham's Daybook and Johnson's letters, this article re‐examines a conventional argument in the literature: that currency depreciation during the Great Debasement made English cloth cheaper and thus stimulated an export boom. The price data reveal that the purchase prices of English wool and cloth rose at roughly same rate as the depreciation of pound sterling. The two effects of coinage debasement – inflation and currency depreciation – largely offset each other. Depreciation alone is insufficient to explain the sustained expansion of English exports, rather, strong foreign demand was likely to provide the underlying momentum for the English cloth boom

Argument (complex analysis · Context (archaeology · Currency · Depreciation (economics · Inflation (cosmology · Pound (networking · Historical Architecture and Urbanism · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Scottish History and National Identity

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Open DOI