ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the Gold-Exchange Standard system put into practice in some peripheral countries before the First World War. It focuses on two central factors: the demand for foreign exchange as an alternative to gold reserves, and its supply as a method of central countries to dole out their currencies at the periphery in the form of credit. The intertwined analysis of banking policies and international monetary relations throws some light on the asymmetric manner in which countries behaved during the heyday of the international gold standard and develops a more precise anatomy of different peripheral systems at the time.
