The Introduction lays out the dilemma of modern central banks in terms of the “Odysseus contract” under which central bankers guide the ship of state safely through monetary turbulence, with wax stuffed in their ears so that they ignore calls for generosity and complaints about meanness, while the political master – Odysseus, the government, the people – agrees to be bound. Poland in the 1920s and again in the 1990s tried to establish such a central bank, in the wake of the reestablishment of the state. Important theorists conceptualized the central bank as part of an underground, alternative state, during moments of foreign rule: the nineteenth century division of Poland, the German occupation of 1939–45, and communist rule. Security considerations played a prominent role, and dictated the national importance of building up gold reserves, especially at moments of geopolitical strain.