This fully illustrated catalogue is the first of its kind to examine the relationship betweenmoney, power, resistance and dissent. It accompanies major exhibitions at The FitzwilliamMuseum in Cambridge and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.War, revolution and protest are defining themes in all periods of world history, shaping nationalidentities and influencing material and visual culture in myriad ways. The ubiquity of money makesit a powerful vehicle for diseminating the messages of the state to the public, but the symbolicand nationalistic iconography of currency could also be subverted or mutilated in powerful actsof defiance, rebellion and propaganda. Beginning in Britain in the wake of the American andFrench Revolutions, the exhibition explores the political and social tensions present in society,and communicated through the production or defacement of money, over the past 200 years. Itcontrasts the use of money by the radicals of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, such asThomas Spence, and the Suffragette movement, with the money produced by European empiresas they scrambled to dominate the rest of the world. The currency histories of the two World Warsreveal the subversion of the very nature of what money is, and highlight the role of money as thetool of occupation, imprisonment, resistance and remembrance. The coins countermarked duringthe Troubles in Northern Ireland hint at the polarised nature of political discourse and sectarianviolence. The exhibition culminates with the work of contemporary artists and activists who usemoney to highlight the challenges of the modern world, both locally and globally – as a canvas, as araw material, or as a powerful means of communication.From a unique coin commemorating the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 to a Syrian banknoterefashioned to raise awareness of the refugee crisis, this publication showcases many newly acquiredobjects from the Fitzwilliam Museum collection, alongside materials from the Archive of ModernConflict. These objects are enhanced by a number of important loans from museums and privatecollections, including the cannon used at the Battle of Mafeking, an exploded transit van andcontemporary art works that take money, its authority and destruction as their theme. Each objectconstitutes a witness statement to its time and its conflict, and each section has its own story totell. The chapters – by archaeologists, historians, curators, and artists – create a rich context for themore than 130 objects in the catalogue, most of which have never been studied in depth or publishedbefore.