Gold clauses in the capital markets of the early twentieth century

Gold clauses were one of the most legally troublesome issues in international contracting during the inter-war years while Mann wrote his first edition of The Legal Aspect of Money (1938). At the time, litigation over gold clauses was a sign that the old monetary order based on the international gold standard was breaking down. This chapter scratches beneath the doctrinal analysis to the commercial and political purposes served by gold clauses. It seeks to connect them with the prevailing understanding of money and monetary valuation in the early decades of the 20th century. It considers the gold clause contracts as historical instances of the early international bond markets in operation, and the litigation over them as one reaction to the financial instability of the era. All this was the context that Mann doubtlessly knew, even if he chose to separate it from his exposition of the legal doctrine.