John Vurpillat

My dissertation, The Other Cross of Gold: The United States and the Search for Global Monetary Stability, 1867-1901, examines the transnational debates and diplomatic struggles over the international gold standard during the late nineteenth century as a window into the larger process of Victorian era globalization.

As an academic historian, I am interested in pursuing questions of U.S. foreign policymaking that have emerged from my first extensive study. One conclusion that has been clarified in my work thus far is the incredible pressures and constraints imposed on policymakers by global economic externalities and the extent to which these new challenges often defied normative economic thought.

I am interested in a set of related fields: international relations, the history of economic thought, globalization, and consumerism.