One country, one currency?

A very brief, but for that all the more turbulent, history of the unified national currencies on the territory of Slovenia

Abstract

The article covers the over two centuries long efforts to establish national currencies in the countries where Slovenes also lived (the Hapsburg monarchy, the Illyrian Provinces, the first and second Yugoslavia, the territory of Slovenia during the Italian, German and Hungarian occupation, and the Republic of Slovenia). In the 19th and 20th century the state authorities made concentrated efforts to unify the various forms of currency that were in circulation on their territories with the aim of strengthening the joint identity of their country's inhabitants, achieving economic integration and conducting an independent macroeconomic and fiscal policy. All this time, however, the unity of state currencies was constantly threatened throughout the territories covered by various factors – both political (war, revolutions and changes in the state borders) as well as economic (the state's lack of hard currencies, inflation).