Dogfights over Chicken Feed? French Petty Coins Circulation and Late 19th Century Small Change Riots

International audienceThe local monetary crises that took place in France between 1894 and 1896 remain largely ignored. Small coins circulation and their withdrawal in late 19th century France took place within a complex multi-scale monetary context, from the international (Latin Monetary Union) to the local level. Thus, in some localities the circulation medium was sometimes widely different from the legal framework, especially in harbours and textile cities, which led to local monetary tensions and sudden outbursts of social unrest. These problems developed not only in consequence of the unsustainability of the small silver denominations and the restriction in the circulation of foreign (or forged) small coins, but also reflected a socially fragmented monetary circulation. These small crises, sometimes leading to violent riots, illustrate the ambiguous nature of money, whose socially separated denominations raised social justice issues and illustrated the limits to the nationalization of monetary systems