Royal Library of Belgium: Guide for the monetary history of the southern Low Countries and the principality of Liège and of Stavelot-Malmédy (Middle Ages and Early Modern period)

Guide for the monetary history of the southern Low Countries and the principality of Liège and of Stavelot-Malmédy (Middle Ages and Early Modern period)

Introduction
	Welcome to the website of the project ‘Guide for the monetary history of the southern Low Countries and the principality of Liège and of Stavelot-Malmédy (Middle Ages and Early Modern period)’, where you can find a description of the project, outlining its main objectives.
Background
	Many historians regularly encounter difficulties concerning monetary issues, whether they study political history, institutional history, history of law, social and economic history, military history or cultural history. In the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, a diversified typology of coins and monies of accounts existed. This frequently causes problems when comparing income, expenditure, prices, wages, fines, etc. Comparisons between different periods or different regions are even more difficult. Furthermore, the different attitudes and concepts regarding monetary issues are not easy to understand. As the data are scattered through various sources and publications -often of uneven quality- a clear overview is needed.
Description of the project
	The main purpose of the project is to give an overview of the used monies of account in the southern Netherlands. The focus will be put especially on the different monetary units and how they relate to each other. The project also intends to collect data from archival sources, old printed lists of money-changers and scientific publications. The book will start with the explanation of some elementary notions of the monetary history, together with a general bibliography. Secondly, each chapter will highlight a specific principality. These chapters will start with a short numismatic history of the treated region, followed by an overview of the mintage, the different ateliers, ordinances and regulations and monetary units. By means of samples of the accounts or other financial documents, the use of the monies of account will be explained. The various regions treated in this part of the guide are: Brabant, Limburg, Flanders, Hainaut, Liège, Luxembourg, Namur, Stavelot-Malmédy and Tournai. This part will end with a chapter that will elaborate an overall impression of the monetary politics in the early modern period. Finally, the last part will provide the reader with an outline of the most important abbreviations, a list of the most important coin collections and a list of the printed lists of the money changers. This way, the book will be in the first place a guide for students and historians as an aid to interpret ancient accounts. This project is an initiative of the Coin Cabinet of the Royal Library of Belgium and it is funded by the Federal Science Policy of Belgium (www.belspo.be).
Staff
	Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Johan van Heesch Prof. dr. Jean-Marie Yante Project officer dr. Hannes Lowagie: Hannes.Lowagie@kbr.be
Collaborators
	Association de numismatique Professeur Marcel Hoc: http://numismatica.fltr.ucl.ac.be/. State Archives in Belgium: http://arch.arch.be/index.php?lang=en_GB. Université Catholique de Louvain: http://www.uclouvain.be/en-index.html. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven: http://www.kuleuven.be/english/. Federal Science Policy of Belgium: http://www.belspo.be.