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Are there studies on ideological propaganda expressed through colonial coinage?

In my work on material culture, I keep encountering coins as these ubiquitous yet under-analyzed artifacts. I'm curious if there's a dedicated scholarly corpus examining them not just economically, but as tools for disseminating imperial ideology, symbols of subjugation, or even sites of subtle resistance through local re-use.

 

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By Mobdchttps://phddiscussions.in/user/profile Answered 3 years ago

Absolutely, and it's a rich and growing interdisciplinary field. I have seen excellent work that moves beyond pure numismatic cataloguing to read coins as "texts." Scholars in material culture and postcolonial studies analyze portraiture, language choices (like Latin vs. local scripts), and iconography (e.g., Britannia, local fauna subdued) to deconstruct narratives of civilization, stability, and inherent superiority. I would recommend looking at studies on Roman provincial coinage as a precursor, and more recent work on British Raj rupees or French Indochinese piastres, which explicitly linked monetary "standardization" with imperial order and cultural hegemony.

 

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