In the early 1870s, the global monetary system transitioned from bimetallism to the gold standard; a momentous change that would tie down the system’s parameters for decades. Newly unified Germany—which, prior to the early 1870s, had maintained an array of silver currencies—introduced a gold curreny in 1873. France—on a bimetallic standard since the early 19th century—suspended free silver coinage soon thereafter. The United States—on an inconvertible paper currency (‘green back’) after the civil war years—also legislated the de facto adoption of a gold currency in 1873, it would take effect six years later. Thus, with the United Kingdom already on gold, by the end of the 1870s the world’s leading industrial nations all used gold currencies. By contrast, silver—which, until 1873, had been on an equal footing with gold—became a secondary currency metal used mostly by peripheral countries.