The euro will go down as one of the most ambitious experiments in European monetary union, but it is by no means the first.

In 1863, Napoleon III made a bid to extend French influence in Europe with the creation of the Latin Monetary Union. France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy were the original members. Four years later, Bulgaria and Greece joined. Napoleon III hoped to turn the LMU into a world force, but a less grandiose aim was to escape the chaos of cantonal currencies in Switzerland and a newly-united Italy.

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The new monetary union was a bimetallic system, whereby each member was asked to produce gold and silver coins of equal weight and value.

But the LMU failed to establish a union central bank, only a pact between governments on how much coinage each member should issue.

Italy proved to be a weak point because its coins were minted at less than the agreed weight. Another flaw was the fact that the exchange rate between silver and gold fluctuated.

The LMU’s global ambitions stuttered in 1867 when an international conference in Paris came down in favour of the gold standard as a means of stabilising the value of currencies.

Britain, the leading economic power, had been on the gold standard since 1821. When Germany, the rising economic power, produced its own gold-backed Reichsmark, the LMU faced a mortal challenge.

The reason was that exchange rate stability within the LMU depended on the countries’ membership of the gold standard rather than the LMU itself.

The inevitable result was that silver coins ceased to be cross-border legal tender in 1885. However, the LMU stumbled on until 1927, more as an article of political faith than a system of rigorous economic management.

Another regional experiment in exchange rate stability took place in 1872 when Denmark, Norway and Sweden formed the Scandinavian Monetary Union.

This time, the countries agreed to a common coinage, with an identical Scandinavian krone in circulation. But Sweden abandoned the monetary union in 1905 when it separated from Norway, and the union came to an end in 1914.

Bilateral monetary unions have a more successful track record. The Anglo-Irish monetary union was formed in 1921 and only came to an end when Ireland joined the European exchange rate mechanism in 1979.

The monetary union between Belgium and Luxembourg was also formed in 1921 and survives to this day, although their notes and coins are not identical.