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Cowries: “The first major imports of moneta cowries into West Africa via the Atlantic arrived in Benin from the Indian Ocean via Lisbon in 1515. The Benin political class, centered on the monarch, monopolized commercial activities with the European traders during the sixteenth century, and it was in that kingdom that we have the first evidence of the monetization of cowries in the Bight of Benin. From there, the monetization of cowries spread westwards following the sequence of African/European trading ports on the coast so that by the end of sixteenth century, cowry money had been adopted in Allada and was spreading to the Yoruba hinterlands. The impetus for the pan-regional adoption of cowry currency came from the imperial expansion of Old Oyo and Dahomey, the expansion of the local economy, and the high tide of cowry imports via coastal ports in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The sense that domestic economy in the Bight of Benin was almost entirely monetized by the seventeenth century is conveyed by Thomas Phillips, an English trader, who observed: "when they go to market [in Whydah] to buy anything they bargain for so many cowries ... and without these shells they can purchase nothing."56 The state, rather than Atlantic commerce itself, was responsible for the monetization of cowries by levying taxes and toll payments in cowries.’”
[1]
“Exports from the Slave Coast amounted to 5,000 captives per year in the 1680s, and peaked at 10,000 per year from the 1690s through the 1710s. Goods received in exchange for captives were predominantly textiles and cowry shells (Cypraea moneta), which originated in the Indian Ocean and were the principle currency in the region. However, other goods such as iron and brass bars, beads, guns and spirits are also mentioned in period texts. Additionally, beads, clay tobacco pipes, ceramic vessels, alcohol bottles and various other trinkets are documented at contemporary archaeological sites. The introduction of European and Asian manufactured goods had a significant impact on communities on the Slave Coast.”
[2]
“First, with regard to payment in cowry shells, Dapper had said that when cowries were available a third of the price was paid in them, but that when they were dear other goods were given instead, whereas according to Barbot normally half the price was paid in cowries, but when they were dear this might be reduced to a third or a quarter and the rest paid in other goods.”
[3]
Manillas and foreign currency (Dutch stuivers) are both mentioned here, but it’s unclear whether they were being used within Allada as currency, or only by the Dutch and/or Dahomeans: “In Allada in the mid-seventeenth century Dutch traders allowed the crews of the hammocks hired for journeys from the coast to the capital the sum of four brass manillas (equivalent to fifty cowries) per day for their food and drink. Since hammockmen were normally hired in crews of six, this suggests an allowance of eight or nine cowries daily per man. There are no comparable data on subsistence rates for free labourers later in the seventeenth century, but the cost of the diet of slaves awaiting embarkation was estimated by the English fort at Offra in 1681 at twenty cowries daily, and by Bosman at Whydah in the late 1690s at the even higher rate of two stuivers, equivalent to 2- English pence, or 32 cowries (perhaps an approximation for thirty) daily; and such slaves were certainly maintained at a more rudimentary level than free workers - on ’bread and water’, as Bosman himself expressed it. Phillips in 1694, it may be noted, reports the cost of a single meal of a dough ball (or ’cankey’) with meat (beef or dog) stew as eight or nine cowries. There had clearly been some increase in living costs, therefore, during the second half of the seventeenth century.”
[4]
“In the later stages of the nineteenth-century cowrie inflation, part of the loss of value of cowries in Dahomey was taken up by increasing the number of cowries in a string, the number of strings in a head remaining 50. Thus, at Whydah, instead of 40 cowries to the string there were 50; at Alladah and Abomey, 46. The ’royal’ string at this period was about 40.”
[5]
[1]: Ogundiran, Akinwumi. “Of Small Things Remembered: Beads, Cowries, and Cultural Translations of the Atlantic Experience in Yorubaland.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 35, no. 2/3, 2002, pp. 427–57: 438–439. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/57IPD2M5/collection [2]: Monroe, J. Cameron. “Urbanism on West Africa’s Slave Coast: Archaeology Sheds New Light on Cities in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade.” American Scientist, vol. 99, no. 5, 2011, pp. 400–09: 403. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/E5WA63Z2/collection [3]: Law, Robin. “Jean Barbot as a Source for the Slave Coast of West Africa.” History in Africa, vol. 9, 1982, pp. 155–73: 161. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/N4D6NU7J/collection [4]: Law, Robin. “Posthumous Questions for Karl Polanyi: Price Inflation in Pre-Colonial Dahomey.” The Journal of African History, vol. 33, no. 3, 1992, pp. 387–420: 411–412. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/VJ69UHEQ/collection [5]: Johnson, M. (1970). The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Part I. The Journal of African History, 11(1), 17–49: 45. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/XZMB8INB/collection |
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Spintria may have been used in the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
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While cowrie shells have a long history of being used as tokens of exchange, Mickey only refers to the use of stylized ornamental cowrie shells among the Hmong: ’Cowrie Shells. Cowrie shells have played and still do play various roles in China. From very ancient times they have been used as money. With regard to the character “pei” (□) Wieger quotes a Chinese phrase which may be translated, “an animal from the sea, representation, in ancient times money and precious shell; from the Chou until the Ch’in Dynasty they used cowries in trade.” Marco Polo refers to them in this capacity in his description of the journey he took into the southwest of China on behalf of the Great Khan. The I-shu (□) says, “Yünnan people call the pei ‘hai p’a,’ p’a being the shell of the animal.” There are in the Museum at West China Union University at Ch’engtu metal objects made to represent cowries and once used as money. Hai-p’a (Cowrie Shell) Miao girls also wear ornaments of silver in the form of cowrie shells.’
[1]
This is in need of further confirmation.
[1]: Mickey, Margaret Portia 1947. “Cowrie Shell Miao Of Kweichow", 7b |
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No reference made to Tokens in the sources consulted.
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Coins were used as currency and there are no mentions of tokens in the sources consulted.
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No mention of articles in the sources consulted thus far.
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Possibly present for Atlantic Complex.
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No mention of Tokens used in the sources consulted.
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According to SCCS variable 17 ’Money (Media of Exchange) and Credit’, ’No media of exchange or money’ or ’Domestically used articles as media of exchange’ or ’Tokens of conventional value as media of exchange’ or ’Foreign coinage or paper coinage’, or ’Indigenous coinage or paper currency’.
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According to SCCS variable 17 ’Money (Media of Exchange) and Credit’ is coded as ’Foreign coinage or paper currency’
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Glass beads. Noted as present among a variety of archaeological sites, but their absence from important settlements suggests they may not have been viewed as an important form of wealth. “The substantial number of glass beads recovered from Khami period sites show that the Torwa-Rozvi state participated in long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean coast.”
[1]
. “That very little evidence of imports has been found from centres of power, and comparatively more from trading stations, casts doubt on the view that glass beads represented a storable source of wealth for the elite. In fact, the Portuguese themselves mentioned that residents of the Torwa–Changamire state emphasised cattle wealth above the proceeds of long-distance trade.”
[2]
.
[1]: (Schoeman 2017) Maria Schoeman, “Political Complexity North and South of the Zambezi River,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedias Online (2017). Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/IXQJ656P/item-details [2]: (Chirikure & Moffett 2018, 18-19) Abigail Moffett & Shadreck Chirikure, “Exotica in Context: Reconfiguring Prestige, Power and Wealth in the Southern African Iron Age,” in Journal of World Prehistory Vol. 29 No. 3 (2016). Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/Z29GV5VQ/item-list |
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The following suggests not only that cattle were no longer used as articles of exchange, but also the existence of system of exchange based on labor rather than physical currency. "By the middle of Red II this material symbol of inequality, cattle, ceased to be commonly kept, despite the emergence of a drier environment more suitable for animal husbandry in the second millennium A.D. Historically, cattle served as social capital in many non-centralized Voltaic societies, enabling marriages and funerary celebrations, and representing wealth. Consequently, the rejection of cattle, in addition to limiting the accumulation of wealth, may also indicate the beginning of matrimonial compensation in agricultural labor, typical of modern autonomous village societies."
[1]
[1]: (Dueppen 2012: 30) |
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The following suggests not only that cattle were no longer used as articles of exchange, but also the existence of system of exchange based on labor rather than physical currency. "By the middle of Red II this material symbol of inequality, cattle, ceased to be commonly kept, despite the emergence of a drier environment more suitable for animal husbandry in the second millennium A.D. Historically, cattle served as social capital in many non-centralized Voltaic societies, enabling marriages and funerary celebrations, and representing wealth. Consequently, the rejection of cattle, in addition to limiting the accumulation of wealth, may also indicate the beginning of matrimonial compensation in agricultural labor, typical of modern autonomous village societies."
[1]
[1]: (Dueppen 2012: 30) |
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We have found no information on this.
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(example: cowries)
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Spintria may have been used in the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
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Spintria may have been used during the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
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The following suggests that the main items of currency were kola nuts, blue cloths, iron, wire, red coral, salt, glassware, wine, aguardiente. "[T]wo documents can in fact shed a great deal of light on the history of Kaabu. Both date from towards the end of the 17th century[...]. The first document is a list of the trade of the Portuguese and the important ports of the region between the Casamance river and Sierra Leone. [...] The author, Governor Rodrigo de Oliveira da Fonseca, states: ’In the Geba river it is possible to navigate almost forty leagues upstream in small boats; halfway up is the settlement of whites which has three hundred Christians including men, women and children; in all this inland interior there are a great number of blacks of diverse nations, all of them have come across the whites and cultivate cotton and many other crops which they sell to the whites together with many slaves and much ivory and wax and some gold and white cloths which the blacks bring from a long way inland and they exchange it for kola nuts which there is the best currency for exchange [genero]… and other good currencies in this whole region are blue cloths and iron and wire and fine red coral and salt…and aguardente is also well received”. [...] According to Castanho, the main items of exchange were kola nuts, followed by salt, glassware, and then items such as wine and aguardente.
[1]
[1]: (Green 2009: 103) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/V2GTBN8A/collection. |
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Sources consulted thus far have not mentioned the use of articles.
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No mention of articles in the sources consulted thus far.
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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No mention of tokens in the sources consulted thus far.
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No mention of Tokens used in the sources consulted.
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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No mention of the use of Tokens in the sources consulted thus far.
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The Norman economy primarily relied on coins as the medium of exchange. The Normans adopted and expanded the Anglo-Saxon monetary system, which used silver coins like pennies. [Carpenter 2003]
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"First, prior to the arrival of the first wave of [colonial] settlers [to Freetown in 1787] there existed no centralised currency system that resembled, for example, the gold dust of the Asante Kingdom (where the use of cowries was forbidden). Cowries were not generally much in use in the coastal and hinterland regions of Sierra Leone, and this led to acute problems in introducing coins that were of small enough denominations for local market transactions (in turn leading to problems with cut dollars in 1818)."
[1]
[1]: (Mew 2016: 199( Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/U3D2FQIH/collection. |
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"First, prior to the arrival of the first wave of [colonial] settlers [to Freetown in 1787] there existed no centralised currency system that resembled, for example, the gold dust of the Asante Kingdom (where the use of cowries was forbidden). Cowries were not generally much in use in the coastal and hinterland regions of Sierra Leone, and this led to acute problems in introducing coins that were of small enough denominations for local market transactions (in turn leading to problems with cut dollars in 1818)."
[1]
[1]: (Mew 2016: 199( Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/U3D2FQIH/collection. |
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"First, prior to the arrival of the first wave of [colonial] settlers [to Freetown in 1787] there existed no centralised currency system that resembled, for example, the gold dust of the Asante Kingdom (where the use of cowries was forbidden). Cowries were not generally much in use in the coastal and hinterland regions of Sierra Leone, and this led to acute problems in introducing coins that were of small enough denominations for local market transactions (in turn leading to problems with cut dollars in 1818)."
[1]
[1]: (Mew 2016: 199) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/U3D2FQIH/collection. |
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Spintria may have been used in the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
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Preiser-Kapeller says absent.
[1]
Unknown in this period. "Within the Byzantine Empire, the billion trachy functioned as a virtual token or quasi-token coin. Its equivalence to the hyperpyron was legislated, and, in 1136, it was worth 1/48 of an hyperpyron, that is to say, one gold coin was worth 48 billion trachea or stamena. The intrinsic value of the billion trachy (based on its silver content) would have been much lower. It was, then, against this token coin that the denier and the mark were exchanged."
[2]
[1]: (Johannes Preiser-Kapeller 2015) Institute for Medieval Research, Division of Byzantine Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences) [2]: (Laiou 2001, 172) Laiou A E, Mottahedeh R P. 2001. The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World. Dumbarton Oaks. |
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Spondylus shells were obtained from trade partners, but do not seem to have been used as currency within Wari society. "A similar technique was employed to obtain important ritual items, such as Spondylus shell and copper: ceramic vessels with key Wari imagery, namely supernatural creatures, seem to have been used to facilitate trade with north coast societies for Spondylus shell (see fig. 30)."
[1]
[1]: (Glowacki in Bergh 2012, 156) |
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Although exchange of goods will have taken place, sources do not suggest that specific monetary items have been found dating to this period.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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Monetary items have not been found dating to this period.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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In Sukhothai (in northern Thailand) where a large quantity
of cowries from the Maldives was unearthed, many inscriptions composed between 1292 and 1400 have demonstrated cowries as a measure of value in Thai society.54 Cowries were used for religious dedications and for the purchase of cheap goods such as cloth and lamps, but also expensive deals such as land. To be true, the use of cowrie money in Thailand did not end until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The situation east of Siam seemed very different, as the cowrie currency was not found either in Cambodia or in Cochin China. [1] [1]: (Yang 2011, p. 13) |
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In Sukhothai (in northern Thailand) where a large quantity
of cowries from the Maldives was unearthed, many inscriptions composed between 1292 and 1400 have demonstrated cowries as a measure of value in Thai society.54 Cowries were used for religious dedications and for the purchase of cheap goods such as cloth and lamps, but also expensive deals such as land. To be true, the use of cowrie money in Thailand did not end until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The situation east of Siam seemed very different, as the cowrie currency was not found either in Cambodia or in Cochin China. [1] [1]: (Yang 2011, p. 13) |
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No mention of tokens in the sources consulted thus far.
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In Sukhothai (in northern Thailand) where a large quantity
of cowries from the Maldives was unearthed, many inscriptions composed between 1292 and 1400 have demonstrated cowries as a measure of value in Thai society.54 Cowries were used for religious dedications and for the purchase of cheap goods such as cloth and lamps, but also expensive deals such as land. To be true, the use of cowrie money in Thailand did not end until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The situation east of Siam seemed very different, as the cowrie currency was not found either in Cambodia or in Cochin China. [1] [1]: (Yang 2011, 13) |
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“In small transactions barter is carried on with rice, cereals, and Chinese objects; fabrics are next employed, and finally, in big deals, gold or silver is used.”
[1]
“The Khmer empire never developed a standardized currency, instead using exchange equivalents in gold, silver, rice, cloth, cattle, butter and slaves (Sedov 1978:125), and remained a marginal player in the China-Southeast Asia trade network.’
[2]
[1]: (Zhou Daguan 1992, 43) [2]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 161) |
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Spintria may have been used in the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
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Spintria may have been used in the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
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We have found no information on this.
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According to SCCS variable 17 ’Money (Media of Exchange) and Credit’, ’4’ Foreign coinage or paper currency was present, not ‘1’ ’No media of exchange or money’, ’Domestically used articles as media of exchange’ or ’Tokens of conventional value as media of exchange’ or ’Indigenous coinage or paper currency’. There may have been shell money in use, but further information is needed. Goodenough mentions turmeric: ’Perhaps the closest thing to a standard medium of exchange was processed turmeric. Turmeric was usually grown by a corporation as a cooperative undertaking, and when processed became corporate property under the mwääniici’s control. Individuals presumably were allotted shares for personal use.’
[1]
More information on turmeric as a possible medium of exchange is needed. The variable was coded absent for the time being.
[1]: Goodenough, Ward Hunt 1951. “Property, Kin, And Community On Truk”, 57 |
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According to SCCS variable 17 ’Money (Media of Exchange) and Credit’, ’4’ Foreign coinage or paper currency was present, not ‘1’ ’No media of exchange or money’, ’Domestically used articles as media of exchange’ or ’Tokens of conventional value as media of exchange’ or ’Indigenous coinage or paper currency’. There may have been shell money in use, but further information is needed. Goodenough mentions turmeric: ’Perhaps the closest thing to a standard medium of exchange was processed turmeric. Turmeric was usually grown by a corporation as a cooperative undertaking, and when processed became corporate property under the mwääniici’s control. Individuals presumably were allotted shares for personal use.’
[1]
More information on turmeric as a possible medium of exchange is needed. The variable was coded absent for the time being.
[1]: Goodenough, Ward Hunt 1951. “Property, Kin, And Community On Truk”, 57 |
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According to SCCS variable 17 ’Money (Media of Exchange) and Credit’, ‘1’ or ’No media of exchange or money’ was present, not ’Domestically used articles as media of exchange’ or ’Tokens of conventional value as media of exchange’ or ’Foreign coinage or paper coinage’, or ’Indigenous coinage or paper currency’.
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Tokens have not been mentioned in the sources consulted.
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Some of the Ashanti period material describes cowrie shells: ‘Tramma means literally cowries, the small shells from the Indian Ocean which, by the route from the north, found their way all over West Africa, and to this day may be seen used for small change in the native markets. The word came to be applied to a sale of movable or immovable property in the following manner. No contract of sale was valid in olden times unless a payment called tramma had been made. Tramma was the name derived from that sum, additional to the selling price, which was set aside and given to the witnesses of the transaction. It was a fixed proportional amount, and, at least for certain specified articles, seemed uniform, e.g. the tramma on the purchase of a cat-the old Ashanti bought cats as repositories of their okra or breath-was always a pesewa, about 1 d.; for a female slave, ntaku-anan, about 2 s.; for a male slave, ntakumiensa, [Page 235] 1 s. 6 d. In the case of such purchases no part of the tramma could be used by vendor or purchaser, and it was said that if a purchaser used any of it to buy food with it for his purchase, the slave or cat would die. This tramma may perhaps be called ‘earnest money’, but it was not originally paid to the vendor. If the transaction was afterwards repudiated, the receivers of the tramma were the witnesses to vouch for the transaction. The word therefore came to be used to designate a sale outright as opposed to awowa, ‘pledge’, or in case of land, ‘mortgage’.’
[1]
We have assumed those to be in use prior to Ashanti rule as well.
[1]: Rattray, R. S. 1923: 234; Literacy Database |
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“[T]he Five Dynasties[…] period saw extensive internecine warfare that brought copper mining to a near standstill in the north. Because copper was becoming more and more scarce, almost all the contending warlords of the time attempted to prevent bronze coinage from flowing into their rivals’ hands as a result of cross-border trade. Their respective kingdoms—Southern Han, Min, Wu Yue, Southern Tang, Chu, Later Tang, Later Shu—cast heavily debased or token coinage from lead, iron, or even clay so that it could be used domestically, for example, to pay soldiers’ salaries. These coins were, of course, of very little intrinsic value, and ipso facto constitute the first step toward ridding Chinese currency of its metallic anchorage.”
[1]
[1]: (Horesh 2013: 375-376) Horesh, N. 2013. ‘CANNOT BE FED ON WHEN STARVING’: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMIC THOUGHT SURROUNDING CHINA’S EARLIER USE OF PAPER MONEY. Journal of the History of Economic Thought 35(3): 373-395. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/6PGHSGRX/library |
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sure I remember reading a reference to tokens - need to check
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Possibly present for Atlantic Complex.
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Economic transactions were also based on a barter system of precious artifacts and metals, animals, food, and services.
[1]
[2]
[1]: e.g. Seaford, R. 2004. Money and the Eraly Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, Cambridge, 125-46 [2]: Tejado, R. and Guerra, G. 2012. "From barter to coins: shifting cognitive frames in Classical Greek economy," in Herrero-Soler, H. and White, A.(eds), Metaphore and Milles. Figurative Language in Business and Economics, Berlin/Boston, 27-48. |
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Cowries: "The clear functional division of labor between the different workshop areas at Zhengzhou means that efficiency in production was a priority. The presence of workshops specializing in the production of particular kinds of goods indicates that there must have been considerable trade of goods during the early Shang period. This also suggests that a system of currency could have existed. Many scholars have proposed that the presence of cowries (haibei 海贝) in early Shang graves were used as currency. These shells usually are found in large graves. In comparison to the Erlitou graves with no more than 12, one early Shang grave had 460 cowries."
[1]
[1]: (Yuan 2013, 336-337) |
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It has been generally argued that in ancient societies economic transactions were also based on fruitful barter.
[1]
[2]
[1]: Garrraty, C. P. 2010. "Investigating market exchange in ancient societies: a theoretical review," in Garraty, C. P. and Stark, B. L. (eds), Archaeological Approaches to Market Exchange in Ancient Societies, Colorado, 3-32 [2]: Chadwick, J. 1976. The Mycenaean World, Cambridge, 78. |
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Spintria may have been used in the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
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Spintria may have been used in the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
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Shell beads may have been tokens of exchange.
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"Like in many other past and present societies in the Americas and elsewhere (see Gasson 2000, Graeber 1996, Insoll and Shaw 1997, Ploeg 2004, Scaramelli and Scaramelli 2005) beads were probably used as a medium of exchange and sign of wealth and status. The presence of loose beads in these deposits may indeed be a form of conspicuous consumption that simultaneously adds enormous value to a place, as in the more than 800 beads recovered from a small section of a terrace at Ciudad Perdida, or work in similar fashion to the other objects. That is, by generating conditions and effects aimed at “capturing”, drawing in and “attracting” wealth. An alternate interpretation is that they may refer to bride price and their interment in these fill layers serves the double purpose of attracting wealth and women towards the household."
[1]
" Collars made of shell and stone beads were also objects of exchange.
[2]
Fish or salt could be traded for goods with high symbolic value which took a quasi-monetary position in a large area of circulation; among them textiles, coca leaves, volcanic stone beads, and gold objects. "Los bienes de este intercambio podían ser objetos como el pescado o la sal, a cambio de bienes de alto valor simbólico que tomaban una posi- ción cuasi-monetaria en una amplia área de circulación; entre éstos los textiles, hojas de coca, cuentas de rocas volcánicas (usadas en tiempos de la conquista para ofrendas, curación, intercambio, collares) (Reichel, 1951:85)) y objetos de oro."
[3]
[1]: (Giraldo 2010, 282) [2]: (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1951, 90) [3]: (Oyuela-Caycedo 1990, 65) |
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Minting in Greece was introduced around 6th century BCE. Before that period economic transactions were based on a barter system of spits, precious artifacts and metals, animals, food, and services.
[1]
[2]
[1]: e.g. Seaford, R. 2004. Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, Cambridge, 125-46 [2]: Tejado, R. and Guerra, G. 2012. "From barter to coins: shifting cognitive frames in Classical Greek economy," in Herrero-Soler, H. and White, A.(eds.), Metaphore and Milles. Figurative Language in Business and Economics, Berlin/Boston, 27-4. |
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are these true tokens or do they come under articles? "While trade in raw materials such as stone and shell had been in place for thousands of years before the Bronze Age, the bronze trade networks seem more substantial. Quarry sites are linked with sites producing raw bronze ingots (which often resemble torcs). Bronze ingots were traded to local artisans who worked them into objects, which were then traded to consumers."
[1]
[1]: (Peregrine 2001, 413) |
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"From a functionalist point of view, it is suggested that the circulation networks changed and became wider because the elite demanded some goods of prestige, with a special preference for the exotic goods, to reinforce their status. So the Bell Beakers and their associated products can be understood as symbols of prestige. The goods of prestige may have been exchanged through social rituals such as weddings, initiation ceremonies, and funerals or may have been part of a more complex exchange system, which would have been essential to communicate with other elite. It is suggested that, together with these goods of prestige, through the same ways, circulated other goods (metals, salt, foods, and other essential raw materials) and that these goods were also reserved for the most powerful men, their families, and some proteges. Metallic objects were very important in these commercial networks."
[1]
[1]: (Clop Garcia 2001, 26) |
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"There seems to have been no gold coinage in the Gurjara-Pratihara dominions. The smallest purchases were made not with copper coinage, but with cowrie shells, cypraea moneta."
[1]
[1]: (Deyell 2001, 409) Deyell, J. 2001. The Gurjara-Pratiharas. In R. Chakravarti (ed) Trade in Early India. OUP. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/MF59EW5P/library |
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‘Tramma means literally cowries, the small shells from the Indian Ocean which, by the route from the north, found their way all over West Africa, and to this day may be seen used for small change in the native markets. The word came to be applied to a sale of movable or immovable property in the following manner. No contract of sale was valid in olden times unless a payment called tramma had been made. Tramma was the name derived from that sum, additional to the selling price, which was set aside and given to the witnesses of the transaction. It was a fixed proportional amount, and, at least for certain specified articles, seemed uniform, e.g. the tramma on the purchase of a cat-the old Ashanti bought cats as repositories of their okra or breath-was always a pesewa, about 1 d.; for a female slave, ntaku-anan, about 2 s.; for a male slave, ntakumiensa, [Page 235] 1 s. 6 d. In the case of such purchases no part of the tramma could be used by vendor or purchaser, and it was said that if a purchaser used any of it to buy food with it for his purchase, the slave or cat would die. This tramma may perhaps be called ‘earnest money’, but it was not originally paid to the vendor. If the transaction was afterwards repudiated, the receivers of the tramma were the witnesses to vouch for the transaction. The word therefore came to be used to designate a sale outright as opposed to awowa, ‘pledge’, or in case of land, ‘mortgage’.’
[1]
According to SCCS variable 17 ’Money (Media of Exchange) and Credit’ ’Tokens of conventional value as media of exchange’ were used, not ’No media of exchange or money’ or ’Domestically used articles as media of exchange’ or ’Foreign coinage or paper coinage’, or ’Indigenous coinage or paper currency’.
[1]: Rattray, R. S. 1923: 234; Literacy Database |
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It has been generally argued that all economic transactions were based on fruitful barter.
[1]
Recent research, however, suggest that market exchanges also existed in prehistory Aegean.
[2]
[3]
[1]: e.g. Chadwick, J. 1976. The Mycenaean World, Cambridge, 78. [2]: Christakis, K. S. 2008. The Politics of the Storage. Storage and Sociopolitical Complexity in Neopalatial Crete (Prehistory Monographs 25), Philadelphia, 138-39 [3]: Parkinson, W., Nakassis, D., and Galaty, M. L. 2013. "Crafts, Specialists, and Markets in Mycenaean Greece: Introduction," American Journal of Archaeology 117, 413-22. |
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|
Minting in Greece was introduced around 6th century BCE. Before that period economic transactions were based on a barter system of spits, precious artifacts and metals, animals, food, and services.
[1]
[2]
[1]: e.g. Seaford, R. 2004. Money and the Eraly Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, Cambridge, 125-46 [2]: Tejado, R. and Guerra, G. 2012. "From barter to coins: shifting cognitive frames in Classical Greek economy," in Herrero-Soler, H. and White, A.(eds), Metaphore and Milles. Figurative Language in Business and Economics, Berlin/Boston, 27-48. |
||||||
|
It has been generally argued that economic transactions were also based on fruitful barter.
[1]
[2]
[1]: e.g. Seaford, R. 2004. Money and the Eraly Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, Cambridge, 125-46 [2]: Tejado, R. and Guerra, G. 2012. "From barter to coins: shifting cognitive frames in Classical Greek economy," in Herrero-Soler, H. and White, A.(eds), Metaphore and Milles. Figurative Language in Business and Economics, Berlin/Boston, 27-48. |
||||||
|
It has been generally argued that all economic transactions were based on fruitful barter.
[1]
Recent research, however, suggest that market exchanges also existed in prehistory Aegean
[2]
[3]
[1]: e.g. Chadwick, J. 1976. The Mycenaean World, Cambridge, 78. [2]: Christakis, K. S. 2008. The Politics of the Storage. Storage and Sociopolitical Complexity in Neopalatial Crete (Prehistory Monographs 25), Philadelphia, 138-39 [3]: Parkinson, W., Nakassis, D., and Galaty, M. L. 2013. "Crafts, Specialists, and Markets in Mycenaean Greece: Introduction," American Journal of Archaeology 117, 413-22. |
||||||
|
It has been generally argued that in ancient societies economic transactions were also based on fruitful barter.
[1]
[2]
[1]: Garrraty, C. P. 2010. "Investigating market exchange in ancient societies: a theoretical review," in Garraty, C. P. and Stark, B. L. (eds), Archaeological Approaches to Market Exchange in Ancient Societies, Colorado, 3-32 [2]: Chadwick, J. 1976. The Mycenaean World, Cambridge, 78. |
||||||
|
It has been generally argued that all economic transactions were based on fruitful barter.
[1]
Recent research, however, suggest that market exchanges also existed in prehistory Aegean.
[2]
[3]
[1]: e.g. Chadwick, J. 1976. The Mycenaean World, Cambridge, 78. [2]: Christakis, K. S. 2008. The Politics of the Storage. Storage and Sociopolitical Complexity in Neopalatial Crete (Prehistory Monographs 25), Philadelphia, 138-39 [3]: Parkinson, W., Nakassis, D., and Galaty, M. L. 2013. "Crafts, Specialists, and Markets in Mycenaean Greece: Introduction," American Journal of Archaeology 117, 413-22. |
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|
"The Mesopotamians did not use coinage (invented in Asia Minor in the seventh century B.C.E.) but employed various commodities as media of exchange and measures of value: occasionally gold, copper, and tin, but most commonly silver and grain. The value of goods entrusted to merchants was reckoned in weights of silver or volumes of barley, as was that of the commodities that the merchants brought back from their expeditions. Silver rings, coils of silver wire that could easily be cut into pieces, and other small units (often of 5 shekels weight) were regularly used in transactions, the requisite quantity of silver being weighed out to make a purchase or pay for a service."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2005: 132) McIntosh, J. 2005. Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspective. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/KK2E3KMD. |
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"The Mesopotamians did not use coinage (invented in Asia Minor in the seventh century B.C.E.) but employed various commodities as media of exchange and measures of value: occasionally gold, copper, and tin, but most commonly silver and grain. The value of goods entrusted to merchants was reckoned in weights of silver or volumes of barley, as was that of the commodities that the merchants brought back from their expeditions. Silver rings, coils of silver wire that could easily be cut into pieces, and other small units (often of 5 shekels weight) were regularly used in transactions, the requisite quantity of silver being weighed out to make a purchase or pay for a service."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2005: 132) McIntosh, J. 2005. Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspective. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/KK2E3KMD. |
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|
"The Mesopotamians did not use coinage (invented in Asia Minor in the seventh century B.C.E.) but employed various commodities as media of exchange and measures of value: occasionally gold, copper, and tin, but most commonly silver and grain. The value of goods entrusted to merchants was reckoned in weights of silver or volumes of barley, as was that of the commodities that the merchants brought back from their expeditions. Silver rings, coils of silver wire that could easily be cut into pieces, and other small units (often of 5 shekels weight) were regularly used in transactions, the requisite quantity of silver being weighed out to make a purchase or pay for a service."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2005: 132) McIntosh, J. 2005. Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspective. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/KK2E3KMD. |
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|
"The Mesopotamians did not use coinage (invented in Asia Minor in the seventh century B.C.E.) but employed various commodities as media of exchange and measures of value: occasionally gold, copper, and tin, but most commonly silver and grain. The value of goods entrusted to merchants was reckoned in weights of silver or volumes of barley, as was that of the commodities that the merchants brought back from their expeditions. Silver rings, coils of silver wire that could easily be cut into pieces, and other small units (often of 5 shekels weight) were regularly used in transactions, the requisite quantity of silver being weighed out to make a purchase or pay for a service."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2005: 132) McIntosh, J. 2005. Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspective. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/KK2E3KMD. |
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"Trade between Ur and Dilmun consisted in exporting textiles (as well as silver and other products, like sesame oil or leather) and returning with ingots of copper from Magan."
[1]
[1]: (Liverani 2014, 190) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/7DRZQS5Q/q/liverani. |
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|
"The Mesopotamians did not use coinage (invented in Asia Minor in the seventh century B.C.E.) but employed various commodities as media of exchange and measures of value: occasionally gold, copper, and tin, but most commonly silver and grain. The value of goods entrusted to merchants was reckoned in weights of silver or volumes of barley, as was that of the commodities that the merchants brought back from their expeditions. Silver rings, coils of silver wire that could easily be cut into pieces, and other small units (often of 5 shekels weight) were regularly used in transactions, the requisite quantity of silver being weighed out to make a purchase or pay for a service."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2005: 132) McIntosh, J. 2005. Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspective. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/KK2E3KMD. |
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I’m coding this as a debatable-yet-present factum because, although metal coinage remained in circulation throughout this period, on a day-to-day level these coins probably had a symbolic value as opposed to a strict, one-to-one exchange value in our sense. Thus, the coins coined by later Carolingians of the Regnum Italicum would have varied in value depending on what region of the peninsula one was in.
[1]
[1]: See Wickham, 2001, 112-113, for this issue |
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Spintria may have been used in the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
|
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Spintria may have been used in the Principate to pay prostitutes although it is also argued that these were gaming pieces.
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according to Ibn al-Mukhtar who was writing in the seventeenth century "the king would pay a dowry of 40,000 cowries to the girl’s family in order to establish his right of ownership over her children" in the event she married a slave.
[1]
Cowrie shells "can be accurately traded by weight, by volume, and by counting; their colour and lustre do not fade as their durability compares favourably with that of metal coins."
[2]
[1]: (Roland and Atmore 2001, 69-70) [2]: (Reader 1998, 387) |
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"The Khitan had made copper cash even before the time of A-pao-chi, and sometime in T’ai-tsung’s reign (927—47) an official was appointed to control the minting of cash and iron production. Shih Ching-t’ang, founder of the puppet Chin regime (936-46) and a loyal vassal of the Khitan, had supplied large amounts of copper cash to help the Liao economy. But during Shih-tsung’s reign, the Sung captive Hu Chiao reported that silk, rather than cash, was the main form of currency even at the capital."
[1]
[1]: (Twitchett, D.C. and K. Tietze. 1994. The Liao. In Franke, H. and D.C. Twitchett (eds) The Cambridge History of China Volume 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368 pp. 43-153. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P. 96) |
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"Most of the vast quantity of silk involved could be re-exported to other countries or function as a form of currency. But some of it was possibly used among the urban rich, who were becoming accustomed to a softer life."
[1]
"Other commodities were exchanged besides those already noted. When a group of Uighur officials and princesses came to Ch’ang-an in 821 to welcome the Princess of T’ai-ho, "they presented the court with camel’s hair, brocade, white silk, sable and mouse furs," and other things like jade belts as well as 1,000 horses and 50 camels.4 5 These goods were no doubt sometimes traded by the Uighurs, but detailed information is nowhere recorded."
[1]
[1]: (Mackerras 1990, 338) |
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"Along the coast and in Ecuador, there was also a long pre-Inca tradition of fabricating bronze axe-monies (hacha) in units of 2, 5, and 10 (Hosler et al. 1990). It is not certain if the axe-monies were still in use by the Inca era, but shell and gold beads (chaquira) used as media of exchange were certainly in circulation in Ecuador and along the north coast. In neither case, however, did the Incas adopt the currencies into their economies."
[1]
[1]: (D’Altroy 2014, 164) |
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According to Van Dongen
[1]
, "payments in kind and payment in cowries continued to be common everywhere among the general population." And "[v]arious gambling houses [...] issued their own counters of suitable shapes and durability, bearing their own marks to guarantee their validity for cash at the end of the game. These chips or counters were also in circulation in lucrative transactions within and around the gambling houses, and, if the credit confidence of the Khun Phattanasombat was good, these eventually came to be accepted as money even in the areas beyond the operating spheres of the establishments."
[2]
[1]: (Van Dongen, no publication year, p. 9) [2]: (Van Dongen, no publication year, p. 13) |
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According to SCCS variable 17 ’Money (Media of Exchange) and Credit’, ‘1’ or ’No media of exchange or money’ was present, not ’Domestically used articles as media of exchange’ or ’Tokens of conventional value as media of exchange’ or ’Foreign coinage or paper coinage’, or ’Indigenous coinage or paper currency’. Shell beads served as tokens of exchange in brideprice negotiations: ’Traditional valuables. The possession of hambo (bone and shell ornaments) and di (feather headdress) may give some indication of a man’s adherence to traditional values. In traditional Orokaiva society the possession of such valuables demonstrated wealth and prowess, but this function is now being taken over by money, as the relative importance of cash as the means of procuring desirable products increases, and money transactions become more frequent. Hambo and di are inherited through the father and sometimes other relatives, and they are usually distributed among the surviving sons. It is difficult to assess the traditional valuables owned by any one individual, as a man often looks after his younger brothers’ shares and more than one person, both within and without the nuclear family, may have rights to the hambo and di kept in a particular household.’
[1]
’Traditional bridewealth exchanges in Papua New Guinea invariably incorporated important valuables symbolizing male and female qualities and duties, the linking of two kinship groups or family networks and so on. The modern stress on cash seems almost an obsession. Orokaiva brideprice includes traditional goods such as pigs and taro, and sometimes feather head-dresses and shell necklaces. But it is the cash component which dominates the aggressive demands and which becomes a focus of talk in the village.’
[2]
’In the first case this was the exchange between man and woman in making their own contributions and deriving their own benefits in the taro garden - a cycle of exchange which parallels the cultivation cycle of the taro itself. In the second case it was the exchange between clansmen which is complete only when the man who received the brideprice provides recruits for the clan, as well as a steady new affinal alliance. It does not concern me here whether psychologists would, in such cases, accept the exchange breakdown as the real cause of the social breakdown; I have illustrated that the Orokaiva view social breakdowns in this manner.’
[3]
[1]: Oostermeyer, W. J., and Joanne Gray 1967. “Twelve Orokaiva Traders”, 35 [2]: Newton, Janice 1989. “Women And Modern Marriage Among The Orokaivans”, 39 [3]: Schwimmer, Eric G. 1973. “Exchange In The Social Structure Of The Orokaiva: Traditional And Emergent Ideologies In The Northern District Of Papua”, 50 |
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According to SCCS variable 17 ’Money (Media of Exchange) and Credit’, ‘1’ or ’No media of exchange or money’ was present, not ’Domestically used articles as media of exchange’ or ’Tokens of conventional value as media of exchange’ or ’Foreign coinage or paper coinage’, or ’Indigenous coinage or paper currency’. Shell beads served as tokens of exchange in brideprice negotiations: ’Traditional valuables. The possession of hambo (bone and shell ornaments) and di (feather headdress) may give some indication of a man’s adherence to traditional values. In traditional Orokaiva society the possession of such valuables demonstrated wealth and prowess, but this function is now being taken over by money, as the relative importance of cash as the means of procuring desirable products increases, and money transactions become more frequent. Hambo and di are inherited through the father and sometimes other relatives, and they are usually distributed among the surviving sons. It is difficult to assess the traditional valuables owned by any one individual, as a man often looks after his younger brothers’ shares and more than one person, both within and without the nuclear family, may have rights to the hambo and di kept in a particular household.’
[1]
’Traditional bridewealth exchanges in Papua New Guinea invariably incorporated important valuables symbolizing male and female qualities and duties, the linking of two kinship groups or family networks and so on. The modern stress on cash seems almost an obsession. Orokaiva brideprice includes traditional goods such as pigs and taro, and sometimes feather head-dresses and shell necklaces. But it is the cash component which dominates the aggressive demands and which becomes a focus of talk in the village.’
[2]
’In the first case this was the exchange between man and woman in making their own contributions and deriving their own benefits in the taro garden - a cycle of exchange which parallels the cultivation cycle of the taro itself. In the second case it was the exchange between clansmen which is complete only when the man who received the brideprice provides recruits for the clan, as well as a steady new affinal alliance. It does not concern me here whether psychologists would, in such cases, accept the exchange breakdown as the real cause of the social breakdown; I have illustrated that the Orokaiva view social breakdowns in this manner.’
[3]
[1]: Oostermeyer, W. J., and Joanne Gray 1967. “Twelve Orokaiva Traders”, 35 [2]: Newton, Janice 1989. “Women And Modern Marriage Among The Orokaivans”, 39 [3]: Schwimmer, Eric G. 1973. “Exchange In The Social Structure Of The Orokaiva: Traditional And Emergent Ideologies In The Northern District Of Papua”, 50 |
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According to a seventeenth-century Dutch source, "for the use of the common people, small shells are used, which come from Manilla and Borneo. 600 to 700 of these are worth one foeang, and the daily provisions and other little necessaries are paid with them. With 5 to 20 of these shells, or even with less, the people may buy on the market sufficient supplies for one day."
[1]
[1]: (Van Ravenswaay 1910, p. 96) |
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"Within the Byzantine Empire, the billion trachy functioned as a virtual token or quasi-token coin. Its equivalence to the hyperpyron was legislated, and, in 1136, it was worth 1/48 of an hyperpyron, that is to say, one gold coin was worth 48 billion trachea or stamena. The intrinsic value of the billion trachy (based on its silver content) would have been much lower. It was, then, against this token coin that the denier and the mark were exchanged."
[1]
[1]: (Laiou 2001, 172) Laiou A E, Mottahedeh R P. 2001. The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World. Dumbarton Oaks. |
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Wampum were used as articles of exchange: ’Wampum. Of the beads that were manufactured and used by the Iroquois those known as “wampum” are by far the most significant. Though the term wampum has been used in some places to include both the discoidal and the cylindrical beads, the true wampum is an Indian-made shell bead, cylindical in form, averaging about one-quarter of an inch in length by an eighth of an inch in diameter, perfectly straight on the sides, with a hole running through it the long way. Some of the wampum beads prepared for commercial trade were as long as half an inch but none of the long beads has been found in the wampum belts. Wampum was made from the quahaug or hard shell clam (Venus Mercenaria) which provides both white and purple beads. The central axis (columellae) of the great conch shell (pyrula Carica), was used for white wampum.’
[1]
’The longhouse owns “wampums” which validate its position as a ritual center but which are rarely brought out. Wampum occasionally figures in the ritual, such as the string of wampum used in the rite of confession. But the significance of wampum generally is that because it is a valuable object, it is used to indicate the significance of the event, either by giving it as a commemoration of the event or as being shown in remembrance of the event. Wampum belts, for example, were given at treaties to indicate good faith in the making of the treaty, and might be brought out to remind others of the treaty. In and of itself, wampum is not sacred.’
[2]
[1]: Lyford, Carrie A. 1945. “Iroquois Crafts”, 45b [2]: Tooker, Elisabeth 1970. “Iroquois Ceremonial Of Midwinter”, 30 |
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“As for cowrie shells (in Hausa farin kudi, or white money), the date of their introduction into Hausaland is unknown; to the west, in Mali and Songhay, cowries were in circulation from an early date, but they were introduced into Kanem-Bornu only much later, in the nineteenth century. Until recently, it was thought that cowries began to circulate in Hausaland in the eighteenth century,120 but a recently published sixteenth-century source mentions that in Katsina ’they use sea shells, which are very white, as money to buy small objects, as is the case among all the blacks, and gold is exchanged for its weight in goods brought by the merchants’.”
[1]
[1]: Niane, D. T., & Unesco (Eds.). (1984). Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century. Heinemann; University of California Press: 298. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/ERZKPETN/collection |
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Gabaga strips of cloth; cowries: “In Bornu, where cowries were introduced in the middle of the nineteenth century along with the Maria Theresa dollar, a different system of counting was in use. The unit of count was the rotl, an Arabic word meaning a pound weight; this unit is believed to have belonged to the copper coinage which was minted in Bornu in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The cowrie rotl consisted of 32 cowries, or four gabaga of eight cowries each (the gabaga was the local traditional currency unit, a strip of cloth, which had replaced the copper coinage in the nineteenth century). According to various writers, the 32-cowrie rotl had a nominal value of 33, the odd cowrie being set aside to help in the counting, as a sort of tally, or as a discount for the trouble of counting. Three rotl would thus make an approximate hundred. This looks very like an attempt to bring a system inherited from currency units which could be physically divided into halves and quarters into relation with the cowrie systems in use on the lower Niger, where strings of 66 and 100 were known. The relation between the rotl and the Maria Theresa dollar was never fixed; in Barth’s time it was subject to manipulation by powerful speculators, and ranged between 45 and 100 rotl to the dollar. Nachtigal put it at 120-130 to the dollar, and Monteil in the 1890s at 135-160. The actual counting of cowries in Bornu was done in groups of four, not in fives as elsewhere in northern West Africa; it is probable that this method of counting goes back to the small copper coins of Bornu.”
[1]
“In Bornu, where cowries were introduced as an act of state in the middle of the nineteenth century, the counting system is unique, having some affinities with both the northern and the southern systems. Apparently it derived, in part, from a pre-existing system of counting copper coinage. Bornu cowries were counted in groups of four, and in so-called ’rotl’ (pounds) of 32 cowries. The Ibo, on the lower Niger, also had a unique system of counting cowries, with a basic unit of six cowries which is not found elsewhere.”
[2]
“The earliest currency area of the cowrie which we can trace in West Africa was on the upper and middle Niger in the medieval period. The cowries came in by way of Sijilmasa, but the area in which they were current was apparently cut off from any other cowrie area; it would therefore seem that they must have been introduced deliberately, as an act of state, as in nineteenth-century Bornu, or by a well-organized group of merchants. […] By 1822, when Clapperton was there, cowries had reached Katagum, but not Bornu; we know that they were introduced into Bornu shortly before Barth’s visit there in 1850, but had not in his time reached Adamawa.”
[3]
“Of the different parts of the Central Sudan, only Borno and the area which came to be known as Adamawa did not belong to the cowrie-gold zone for several centuries before 1900; Borno participation began in I848, while Adamawa was drawn in at roughly the same time. Nevertheless, the Borno economy was an essential section of the larger Central Sudan economy long before this time. Indeed, the Hausa cities and Borno together formed a metropolitan region or series of central places from which much economic development radiated.”
[4]
“Cowrie imports continued on the Guinea Coast after i845, but the entrance of Borno into the cowrie zone in 1848, after several decades of government consideration of currency reform, reduced the inflationary influence on the Caliphate economy.35 Borno’s withdrawal of large quan- tities of shell from the Hausa country retarded the inflation but did not end it. The early i86os were a period of steep inflation, and the exchange rate doubled to 5,ooo K per silver coin.”
[5]
[1]: Johnson, M. (1970). The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Part I. The Journal of African History, 11(1), 17–49: 42. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/XZMB8INB/collection [2]: Johnson, M. (1970). The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Part I. The Journal of African History, 11(1), 17–49: 37. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/XZMB8INB/collection [3]: Johnson, M. (1970). The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Part I. The Journal of African History, 11(1), 17–49: 32–33. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/XZMB8INB/collection [4]: Lovejoy, P. E. (1974). Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria. The Journal of African History, 15(4), 563–585: 565. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/58ASG655/collection [5]: Lovejoy, P. E. (1974). Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria. The Journal of African History, 15(4), 563–585: 577. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/58ASG655/collection |
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Wampum were used as articles of exchange: ’Wampum. Of the beads that were manufactured and used by the Iroquois those known as “wampum” are by far the most significant. Though the term wampum has been used in some places to include both the discoidal and the cylindrical beads, the true wampum is an Indian-made shell bead, cylindical in form, averaging about one-quarter of an inch in length by an eighth of an inch in diameter, perfectly straight on the sides, with a hole running through it the long way. Some of the wampum beads prepared for commercial trade were as long as half an inch but none of the long beads has been found in the wampum belts. Wampum was made from the quahaug or hard shell clam (Venus Mercenaria) which provides both white and purple beads. The central axis (columellae) of the great conch shell (pyrula Carica), was used for white wampum.’
[1]
’The longhouse owns “wampums” which validate its position as a ritual center but which are rarely brought out. Wampum occasionally figures in the ritual, such as the string of wampum used in the rite of confession. But the significance of wampum generally is that because it is a valuable object, it is used to indicate the significance of the event, either by giving it as a commemoration of the event or as being shown in remembrance of the event. Wampum belts, for example, were given at treaties to indicate good faith in the making of the treaty, and might be brought out to remind others of the treaty. In and of itself, wampum is not sacred.’
[2]
[1]: Lyford, Carrie A. 1945. “Iroquois Crafts”, 45b [2]: Tooker, Elisabeth 1970. “Iroquois Ceremonial Of Midwinter”, 30 |
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"Taxes were not paid in money, but in the produce of the soil and in the various articles manufactured by the people, there being no native coinage and but very little foreign money in circulation."
[1]
Significant "wealth economy" in the form of precious feathered garments (cloaks, capes, helmets, lei) which was very important to the ruling elite (the ali’i).
[2]
[1]: (Kuykendall 1938, 54) [2]: (Kirch 2016, personal communication) |
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"On the whole, Sogdian great commerce did extremely well without any coinage of its own. A large-scale barter economy operated from one end of Asia to the other, composed of a few deluxe products in universal demand—precious metals, silk, spices, perfumes. Yet it must be noted that what appears to be barter from a western perspective is actually a monetary exchange from the perspective of the Chinese: Sogdian products were paid for in rolls of silk in China, where silk was in fact a money."
[1]
[1]: (De la Vaissière 2005, 174) |
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"Unlike other regions in West Africa, coastal Senegambia and Sierra Leone had no significant iron industry of their own and iron bars were the favoured indigenous and non-state controlled monetary medium, or ‘commodity’ currency, and given in exchange or as units or ‘measures’ of value. Like cowries elsewhere, the iron bars were durable, divisible and difficult to counterfeit and they were used for calculating the value of manufactured goods, tobacco, rum, firearms, cloth and other goods. By the nineteenth century the system had become a clumsy medium of exchange though. For example, for the purposes of book-keeping, Sierra Leone Company accounts were recorded in pounds, shillings and pence, whereas for the best part of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, goods and labour were locally valued in iron bars (or Spanish dollars)."
[1]
[1]: (Mew 2016: 200) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/U3D2FQIH/collection. |
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"Unlike other regions in West Africa, coastal Senegambia and Sierra Leone had no significant iron industry of their own and iron bars were the favoured indigenous and non-state controlled monetary medium, or ‘commodity’ currency, and given in exchange or as units or ‘measures’ of value. Like cowries elsewhere, the iron bars were durable, divisible and difficult to counterfeit and they were used for calculating the value of manufactured goods, tobacco, rum, firearms, cloth and other goods. By the nineteenth century the system had become a clumsy medium of exchange though. For example, for the purposes of book-keeping, Sierra Leone Company accounts were recorded in pounds, shillings and pence, whereas for the best part of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, goods and labour were locally valued in iron bars (or Spanish dollars)."
[1]
[1]: (Mew 2016: 200) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/U3D2FQIH/collection. |
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Ostrich eggshell beads; glass beads. Large finds of each have been found in certain Toutswe sites, and their presence in a variety of sites as well as their foreign origins suggest their use as part of trading networks of exchange. “Evidence that both local and long-distance trade goods reached even the smaller sites of the Toutswe hierarchy is provided by the discovery of a pot containing over 2,600 glass beads, 5,000 ostrich eggshell beads [in Kgaswe].”
[1]
“Evidence for this trade [around the vicinity of the Kalahari Desert] is occasionally present from sites in east central Botswana. Primarily this consists of… glass beads. These are regularly if sporadically encountered…. The single largest occurrence… comes from Kgaswe….”
[2]
[1]: (Denbow 1986; 19) James Denbow, “A New Look at the Later Prehistory of the Kalahari,” in The Journal of African History Vol. 27, No.1 (1986): 3-28. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X3DXN8CW/collection [2]: (Reid & Segobye 2000; 61) Andrew Reid & Alinah Segobye, “Politics, Society and Trade on the Eastern Margins of the Kalahari,” in South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series Vol. 8 (2000): 58-68. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/7KBFCB3J/collection |
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Cowries; glass beads. Chirikure notes the presence of both cowries and glass beads within Great Zimbabwe in various locations, and it seems reasonable to infer that these were likely used as trade items in some capacity. “[exotics] such as zvuma (glass beads)… and cowries were recovered in different parts of the site.”
[1]
[1]: (Chirikure 2021, 289) Shadreck Chirikure, Great Zimbabwe: Reclaiming a ‘Confiscated’ Past (Routledge, 2021). Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/MWWKAGSJ/collection |
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Cowrie shells used in West Africa. "In the long term, the slave trade began to dominate trade relations with Africa. Until 1730 the slave trade was officially in the hands of the WIC. [...] To be successful in the slave trade, it was essential to have the right goods for the exchange cargo. Without a good mix of textiles, rifles, gunpowder, iron bars, alcohol, utensils and sometimes cowrie shells – which came from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean – there would have been no hope of becoming an attractive trading partner for the African slave traders."
[1]
[1]: (Emmer and Gommans 2020: 228) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AI9PPN7Q/collection. |
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Strings, "standard measurements of beads", possibly glass beads. "Given their quality as a high-value and low-bulk commodity, long-distance travelers likely carried Ifè glass beads across the Yorùbá world and the adjacent areas as a means of payment for provisions on their journeys. The durability and affective qualities of these dichroic beads, especially the most common sègi, and the guarantee of their supply and demand encouraged people to use them as a means of high-value exchange and for storing wealth. We are short of evidence on whether glass beads evolved to serve as a standard currency, especially as a means of pricing. However, strings and other standard measurements of beads were likely used for purchasing high-value products and services."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 107-108) |
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Cowrie shells were a ubiquitous form of currency in East Africa and gradually spread to West Africa during the Middle Ages. “As early as the 13th century, the proliferation of cowrie shells as a dominant currency had taken place, mainly because of their import into Africa from different areas. First, Arab traders imported cowry shells from areas around the Maldives islands and the Indian Ocean into North Africa and, later, into other parts of Africa.”
[1]
[1]: (Tengan 2012, 122) Tengan, Alexis, B. 2012. ‘Currency (cowrie shells).’In Edward Ramsamy Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: an Encyclopedia. London: Sage Publications. Pp 122-123. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Tengan/titleCreatorYear/items/FQU6UXTV/item-list |
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“Local trade was facilitated by the use as currency of the cowry shell (cypraea moneta), which was imported ultimately from the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. The date at which the Oyo adopted this currency is uncertain. The use of cowries in Oyo is first attested in a contemporary source -only in the 1780s.”
[1]
“It is impossible to estimate what proportion of the Alafin’s imperial revenues came from these trade taxes as opposed to the fixed tributes. But even these fixed tributes did not, as Ajayi appears to suppose, represent taxes on agricultural production as opposed to trade. A considerable proportion of the tributes was paid in cash-for example, Dahomey paid 400 bags of cowries (about $4,000) annually. And part was paid in the form of imported European goods for example, the tribute of Dahomey included coral, European cloth, muskets, and gunpowder and that of Porto Novo consisted of ’the richest European commodities’, while within the Oyo kingdom Ilase paid gunpowder, flints, and tobacco and Ifonyin ’cloths and other articles of European manufacture’.”
[2]
“Oyo rule over the towns of the kingdom involved, first, the payment of an annual tribute (in Yoruba, asingba or isin). The oba and bale of the subordinate towns were required to bring their tribute to Oyo in person at the annual Bere festival, at which they followed the chiefs of the capital in paying their homage and tribute to the Alafin. […] The basic element in the tribute paid by the provincial towns was the bere grass used for the thatching of the palace roofs, the giving of which was symbolic of subordination to the recipient. In some cases, the tribute may have consisted solely of this bere grass. This is claimed, for example, at Iwo. But usually the towns paid additional tributes in money (i.e. cowry shells) and kind. The town of Saki is said to have paid two rams and ten bags of cowries (i.e. 200,000 cowries, or about 100 dollars).”
[3]
[1]: Law, R. (1977). The Oyo Empire c. 1600 – c. 1836: A West African Imperialism in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Oxford University Press: 209. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB32ZPCF/collection [2]: Law, R. (1977). The Oyo Empire c. 1600 – c. 1836: A West African Imperialism in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Oxford University Press: 231. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB32ZPCF/collection [3]: Law, R. (1977). The Oyo Empire c. 1600 – c. 1836: A West African Imperialism in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Oxford University Press: 98–99. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB32ZPCF/collection |
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Cowry shells. “…by the cowry shells which served as currency in local markets. The importance of imported goods in royal largesse was already clear in the 1720S, when Bulfinch Lamb noted that the king of Dahomey ’gives away Booges [cowries] like Dirt, and Brandy like Water’. The importance of cowry shells should especially be stressed: in the second half of the seventeenth century, it appears that between a third and a half of the value of imports into the Slave Coast was normally in cowries. It is somewhat ironic that Peukert points to the existence of a flourishing local exchange economy in Dahomey as part of his argument for the downgrading of the significance of overseas trade. But this flourishing local trade, lubricated by a currency of imported cowry shells, was evidently, in large measure, itself a consequence of the booming Atlantic trade.”
[1]
“The counting of cowries in strings and heads was subject to a number of adjustments. In eighteenth-century Dahomey, strung cowries were one cowrie short of the nominal 40, the reward to the stringer for the work of piercing and stringing the shells. […] In the later stages of the nineteenth-century cowrie inflation, part of the loss of value of cowries in Dahomey was taken up by increasing the number of cowries in a string, the number of strings in a head remaining 50. Thus, at Whydah, instead of 40 cowries to the string there were 50; at Alladah and Abomey, 46.”
[2]
[1]: Law, R. (1986). Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections on the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey. The Journal of African History, 27(2), 237–267: 260. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/9ABZ5ETX/collection [2]: Johnson, M. (1970). The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Part I. The Journal of African History, 11(1), 17–49: 45. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/XZMB8INB/collection |
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Cowries: “The second letter of the third section of the 1688 Description comprises an extended description of the kingdom of "Juda" or Whydah (133-38). Barbot describes the natural resources of the country, the conduct of the European trade there, the local king and his court, the local religion (especially the veneration of snakes), the administration of justice (including a form of trial by ordeal, the accused being obliged to swim across a crocodile-infested river), burial customs (including human sacrifice), the ceremony of the blood pact, agriculture and crafts, weaponry, the local currency (of cowry shells), domestic slavery and polygamy, and much else besides.”
[1]
“These cowries, brought in the early sixteenth century by the Portuguese, and in the first place by way of Sao Tome, were in use on the coast in the sixteenth century, in both the Benin and Forcados areas; by the seventeenth century they were in use at Whydah and Ardra,"l and we have discussed above the possibility that cowries may have been already in use in these areas before the arrival of the Portuguese." In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Whydah was the main centre of cowrie imports, though cowries were in use as far west as Lay (a little west of modern Ada, west of the Volta) in the 1680s, and in Christiansborg by the early eighteenth century, and probably in the later seventeenth century.”
[2]
[1]: Law, Robin. “Jean Barbot as a Source for the Slave Coast of West Africa.” History in Africa, vol. 9, 1982, pp. 155–73: 159. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/N4D6NU7J/collection [2]: Johnson, Marion. “The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Part I.” The Journal of African History, vol. 11, no. 1, 1970, pp. 17–49: 34-35. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/XZMB8INB/collection |
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Cowries: “The cowrie currency of the Caliphate was admirably suited to the low-value transactions that made up most of the day-to-day market activity of that area. At a time when a British penny was worth about 125 cowries and when a person’s food supply for a whole day cost perhaps eighty cowries, buying just a single banana would have posed insuperable difficulty if other moneys were used.”
[1]
“Within the Sokoto Caliphate, emirs used royal slaves to expand political control over their territory. Royal slaves—numbering between 2,000 and 5,000 in Kano, for example—were prominent and were organized into slave households, which served as a system of recruitment and training. These slaves were usually war captives, with the emir retaining about half, bought using cowry shells as currency.”
[2]
[1]: Stiansen, Endre, and Jane I. Guyer, editors. Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective. Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999: 63. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/A9F557EW/collection [2]: Falola, Toyin, and Ann Genova. Historical Dictionary of Nigeria. The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2009: 328. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SJAIVKDW/collection |
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“Cowries were second to salt in importance as a currency in the Lower Niger. Ogedengbe estimates that they were introduced from the coast into the Niger valley in the 1820s, and that, by the 1830s, "cowries had become well established as the major currency of the Niger Valley." He observes that cowries did not serve as a medium of exchange in the delta states: they merely "accepted [them] as commodities from the Europeans, reselling [them] in the hinterlands as valuable currency."38 The Lower Niger trade involved traders of different ethnic and therefore linguistic backgrounds. In the main, there were the Ijo of the Niger delta, the Igbo, the Edo, the Igala, and the Hausa. In spite of this diversity, the traders seem to have had little difficulty in communicating and doing business with one another. According to the European testimonies, Hausa was the language of business in the Lower Niger. But of greater importance was the ability of the traders to develop proficiency in several languages.”
[1]
[1]: Nwaubani, Ebere. “The Political Economy of Aboh, 1830-1857.” African Economic History, no. 27, 1999, pp. 93–116: 98. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FZIM9AVA/collection |
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"As we have noted, pre-colonial Buganda never developed a purely monetary economy, and even during the later nineteenth century barter was an important method of exchange, existing alongside a cowry currency. Nevertheless, the information we have on nineteenth-century prices suggests that virtually everything had at least a nominal cowry value. Moreover, other currencies existed alongside cowries, and some undoubtedly pre-dated the latter. Roscoe mentions a "small ivory disc" which he terms ’sanga’, ssanga being the Luganda term for either a tusk or ivory in general. This, Roscoe claimed, was one of the earliest forms of money in Buganda; although clearly indigenous and probably much older than the cowry shell, it also had a cowry value. One disc was apparently worth one hundred shells. Ivory played a dual role insofar as it was on the one hand a commodity valued for its own sake, and on the other a standard medium of exchange. The former role gradually took precedence over the latter, as demand for ivory from the coast increased, so that as the nineteenth century progressed, ivory as money all but disappeared. [...] A third pre-cowry currency has already been mentioned, namely the blue bead, and as we have also already noted, examples of beads have been excavated at Ntusi. From such archaeological evidence, it is possible to suggest that beads may be the oldest currency in the region."
[1]
[1]: (Reid 2010: 126-127) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/2H64W34U/collection. |
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“More than by the inflationary import of manilla rings, cowries and iron during the 19th century, the Igbo economy was affected by an increasing import of cheap industrial goods from Europe. Hardwares fabricated in the growing British steel industry competed successfully with the craft products of local smiths. Cheap cotton from Manchester started to replace the various kinds of African cloth, while the missionary activities promoted European standards of prudery and an increasing consumption of textile. The salt formerly produced in the Niger delta was now imported almost as ballast from Liverpool (Jones fthcg.: 623). The European traders developed a monopoly in the salt trade by encouraging their partners, the African coastal chiefs, to prohibit salt production on the coast (Northrup 1978: 213).”
[1]
“It would appear that by the eighteenth century much of the commercial transactions in Igboland were done in money. Using information gathered in the nineteenth century and early this century, one would discover that many currencies were used in pre-colonial Igboland. These included salt, umumu, cowries, manillas, brass rods and copper wires. […] information available to the present writer would tend to show that as much as one or two currencies might be dominant in one part, there was no area of Igboland where any of them would not have been recognized and used as money.”
[2]
[1]: Müller, B. (1985). Commodities as Currencies: The Integration of Overseas Trade into the Internal Trading Structure of the Igbo of South-East Nigeria (Les marchandises comme monnaies: l’intégration de la traite d’outremer dans la structure commerciale interne des Igbo du Sud-Est-Nigeria). Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 25(97), 57–77: 71. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/4SWQS6N5/collection [2]: Afigbo, A. E. (1981). Economic Foundations of Pre-Colonial Igbo Society. In Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture (pp. 124–144). University Press in association with Oxford University Press; 139. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/5I5XITDA/collection |
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Cowry shells: “All three associations were concerned with palace revenues and stores. The Iwebo had charge of the Oba’s reserves of cowrie shells, beads, cloth, and other trade goods.”
[1]
“The reign of Oba Esigie witnessed the increasing monetisation of the enclave economy (cowries), and provided the opportunity for the development of "institutionalized mechanisms of exploitation" (Belasco 1980, 81-82). The palace control of cowries and the elite domination of commercial development in the administrative and economic enclaves provided the final element in the emergence of the dual economy. The capital and commercial centres had developed highly sophisticated and well-organised monetary exchange systems. However, the vassal villages in the empire remained relatively static, with little circulation of either commercial consumer goods or currency forms (cowries or manillas).”
[2]
“Belasco (1980) argues that strung cowries provided for "a) trade goods standardization and thereby a means of channeling production to state-defined ends, b) for administering exchange rates and terms of trade, c) for draining wealth out of the social and ritual cycle, d) for enabling trade transactions of ever increasing volume and variety, and e) by its circulation, for the introduction of local autonomous markets to trans-local, state run trade channels."”
[3]
“De Barros, in the middle of the sixteenth century, wrote: ‘With these shells for ballast, many ships are laden for Bengal and Siam, where they are used for money just as we use small copper coin for buying things of little value. And even to this Kingdom of Portugal, or three thousand quintals are brought by way of ballast; they are then exported to Guinea, and the kingdoms of Benin and Congo, where also they are used for money.’”
[4]
Johnson, M. (1970). The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Part I. The Journal of African History, 11(1), 17–49: 19–20. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/XZMB8INB/collection
[1]: Bradbury, R. E. (1967). The Kingdom of Benin. In West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century (Repr, pp. 1–35). Published for the International African Institute by Oxford University Press: 23. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/Z8DJIKP8/collection [2]: Sargent, R. A. (1986). From A Redistribution to an Imperial Social Formation: Benin c.1293-1536. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines, 20(3), 402–427: 421. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/AUEZSTBR/collection [3]: Sargent, R. A. (1986). From A Redistribution to an Imperial Social Formation: Benin c.1293-1536. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines, 20(3), 402–427: 426. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/AUEZSTBR/collection [4]: |
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If these were used as anything other than currency, would be articles rather than tokens: “Kantai, iron objects pointed at each end and thicker in the middle, were another form of currency recognized from Jukun territory to Hamaruwa, farther up-river. According to Barth, ibid., the average rate of exchange around 1851 was forty akika per slave at Wukari, while according to Crowther, Journal of an Expedition 1854, 128, each slave cost thirty-six akika or one hundred kantai.”
[1]
[1]: Tambo, D. C. (1976). The Sokoto Caliphate Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 9(2), 187–217: 203. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/2H7Z7CFU/collection |
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"As we have noted, pre-colonial Buganda never developed a purely monetary economy, and even during the later nineteenth century barter was an important method of exchange, existing alongside a cowry currency. Nevertheless, the information we have on nineteenth-century prices suggests that virtually everything had at least a nominal cowry value. Moreover, other currencies existed alongside cowries, and some undoubtedly pre-dated the latter. Roscoe mentions a "small ivory disc" which he terms ’sanga’, ssanga being the Luganda term for either a tusk or ivory in general. This, Roscoe claimed, was one of the earliest forms of money in Buganda; although clearly indigenous and probably much older than the cowry shell, it also had a cowry value. One disc was apparently worth one hundred shells. Ivory played a dual role insofar as it was on the one hand a commodity valued for its own sake, and on the other a standard medium of exchange. The former role gradually took precedence over the latter, as demand for ivory from the coast increased, so that as the nineteenth century progressed, ivory as money all but disappeared. [...] A third pre-cowry currency has already been mentioned, namely the blue bead, and as we have also already noted, examples of beads have been excavated at Ntusi. From such archaeological evidence, it is possible to suggest that beads may be the oldest currency in the region."
[1]
[1]: (Reid 2010: 126-127) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/2H64W34U/collection. |
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"No single currency was in general use. Buhaya used cowrie shells, Ujiji employed special beads, and Pare utilised maize cobs, but none had a fixed value elsewhere."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 68) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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Cowrie shells were a ubiquitous form of currency in East Africa and gradually spread to West Africa during the Middle Ages. “As early as the 13th century, the proliferation of cowry shells as a dominant currency had taken place, mainly because of their import into Africa from different areas. First, Arab traders imported cowry shells from areas around the Maldives islands and the Indian Ocean into North Africa and, later, into other parts of Africa.”
[1]
[1]: (Tengan 2012, 122) Tengan, Alexis, B. 2012. ‘Currency (cowry shells).’In Edward Ramsamy Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: an Encyclopedia. London: Sage Publications. Pp 122-123. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Tengan/titleCreatorYear/items/FQU6UXTV/item-list |
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|
Cowrie shells were a ubiquitous form of currency in East Africa and gradually spread to West Africa during the Middle Ages. “As early as the 13th century, the proliferation of cowry shells as a dominant currency had taken place, mainly because of their import into Africa from different areas. First, Arab traders imported cowry shells from areas around the Maldives islands and the Indian Ocean into North Africa and, later, into other parts of Africa.”
[1]
[1]: (Tengan 2012, 122) Tengan, Alexis, B. 2012. ‘Currency (cowry shells).’In Edward Ramsamy Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: an Encyclopedia. London: Sage Publications. Pp 122-123. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/FQU6UXTV/library |
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|
Cowrie shells were a ubiquitous form of currency in East Africa and gradually spread to West Africa during the Middle Ages. “As early as the 13th century, the proliferation of cowrie shells as a dominant currency had taken place, mainly because of their import into Africa from different areas. First, Arab traders imported cowry shells from areas around the Maldives islands and the Indian Ocean into North Africa and, later, into other parts of Africa.”
[1]
[1]: (Tengan 2012, 122) Tengan, Alexis, B. 2012. ‘Currency (cowrie shells).’In Edward Ramsamy Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: an Encyclopedia. London: Sage Publications. Pp 122-123. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Tengan/titleCreatorYear/items/FQU6UXTV/item-list |
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Cowry shells. “It was not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that cowrie shells were definitely recorded as being used as money in West Africa.”
[1]
“Cowry shells (mollusks of the species Cypriaea Moneta and annulus) originated in the Indian Ocean and were brought to West Africa in European ships, often after passing through auctions in Amsterdam or London. Jon Hogendorn and M. Johnson (1986) provide a thorough account of this history explaining the large volume of shells brough to West Africa and the cycles of inflation that followed. As they moved to the interior, the shells crossed several linguistic and cultural boundaries. In a vast zone the cowry coexisted not only with gold dust and imported silver coins but also with salt bars, brass in rods or in heavy horseshoe shapes referred to as manillas, locally produced iron and cloth currencies, beads, and other means of payment.”
[2]
[1]: (Yang 2019, 165) Yang, Bin. 2019. Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money: A Global History. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Yang/titleCreatorYear/items/I5DXF22V/item-list [2]: (Saul 2004, 73) Saul, Mahir. 2004. ‘Money in Colonial Transition: Cowries and Francs in West Africa’ American Anthropologist. Vol 106:1. Pp 71-84. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FKJJ3H49/collection |
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|
Cowry shells. “It was not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that cowrie shells were definitely recorded as being used as money in West Africa.”
[1]
“Cowry shells (mollusks of the species Cypriaea Moneta and annulus) originated in the Indian Ocean and were brought to West Africa in European ships, often after passing through auctions in Amsterdam or London. Jon Hogendorn and M. Johnson (1986) provide a thorough account of this history explaining the large volume of shells brough to West Africa and the cycles of inflation that followed. As they moved to the interior, the shells crossed several linguistic and cultural boundaries. In a vast zone the cowry coexisted not only with gold dust and imported silver coins but also with salt bars, brass in rods or in heavy horseshoe shapes referred to as manillas, locally produced iron and cloth currencies, beads, and other means of payment.”
[2]
[1]: (Yang 2019, 165) Yang, Bin. 2019. Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money: A Global History. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Yang/titleCreatorYear/items/I5DXF22V/item-list [2]: (Saul 2004, 73) Saul, Mahir. 2004. ‘Money in Colonial Transition: Cowries and Francs in West Africa’ American Anthropologist. Vol 106:1. Pp 71-84. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FKJJ3H49/collection |
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|
Cowry shells. “It was not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that cowrie shells were definitely recorded as being used as money in West Africa.”
[1]
“Cowry shells (mollusks of the species Cypriaea Moneta and annulus) originated in the Indian Ocean and were brought to West Africa in European ships, often after passing through auctions in Amsterdam or London. Jon Hogendorn and M. Johnson (1986) provide a thorough account of this history explaining the large volume of shells brough to West Africa and the cycles of inflation that followed. As they moved to the interior, the shells crossed several linguistic and cultural boundaries. In a vast zone the cowry coexisted not only with gold dust and imported silver coins but also with salt bars, brass in rods or in heavy horseshoe shapes referred to as manillas, locally produced iron and cloth currencies, beads, and other means of payment.”
[2]
[1]: (Yang 2019, 165) Yang, Bin. 2019. Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money: A Global History. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Yang/titleCreatorYear/items/I5DXF22V/item-list [2]: (Saul 2004, 73) Saul, Mahir. 2004. ‘Money in Colonial Transition: Cowries and Francs in West Africa’ American Anthropologist. Vol 106:1. Pp 71-84. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FKJJ3H49/collection |
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|
Cowry shells. “It was not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that cowrie shells were definitely recorded as being used as money in West Africa.”
[1]
“Cowry shells (mollusks of the species Cypriaea Moneta and annulus) originated in the Indian Ocean and were brought to West Africa in European ships, often after passing through auctions in Amsterdam or London. Jon Hogendorn and M. Johnson (1986) provide a thorough account of this history explaining the large volume of shells brough to West Africa and the cycles of inflation that followed. As they moved to the interior, the shells crossed several linguistic and cultural boundaries. In a vast zone the cowry coexisted not only with gold dust and imported silver coins but also with salt bars, brass in rods or in heavy horseshoe shapes referred to as manillas, locally produced iron and cloth currencies, beads, and other means of payment.”
[2]
[1]: (Yang 2019, 165) Yang, Bin. 2019. Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money: A Global History. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Yang/titleCreatorYear/items/I5DXF22V/item-list [2]: (Saul 2004, 73) Saul, Mahir. 2004. ‘Money in Colonial Transition: Cowries and Francs in West Africa’ American Anthropologist. Vol 106:1. Pp 71-84. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FKJJ3H49/collection |
||||||
|
Cowry shells. “It was not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that cowrie shells were definitely recorded as being used as money in West Africa.”
[1]
“Cowry shells (mollusks of the species Cypriaea Moneta and annulus) originated in the Indian Ocean and were brought to West Africa in European ships, often after passing through auctions in Amsterdam or London. Jon Hogendorn and M. Johnson (1986) provide a thorough account of this history explaining the large volume of shells brough to West Africa and the cycles of inflation that followed. As they moved to the interior, the shells crossed several linguistic and cultural boundaries. In a vast zone the cowry coexisted not only with gold dust and imported silver coins but also with salt bars, brass in rods or in heavy horseshoe shapes referred to as manillas, locally produced iron and cloth currencies, beads, and other means of payment.”
[2]
[1]: (Yang 2019, 165) Yang, Bin. 2019. Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money: A Global History. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Yang/titleCreatorYear/items/I5DXF22V/item-list [2]: (Saul 2004, 73) Saul, Mahir. 2004. ‘Money in Colonial Transition: Cowries and Francs in West Africa’ American Anthropologist. Vol 106:1. Pp 71-84. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FKJJ3H49/collection |
||||||
|
Cowry shells. “It was not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that cowrie shells were definitely recorded as being used as money in West Africa.”
[1]
“Cowry shells (mollusks of the species Cypriaea Moneta and annulus) originated in the Indian Ocean and were brought to West Africa in European ships, often after passing through auctions in Amsterdam or London. Jon Hogendorn and M. Johnson (1986) provide a thorough account of this history explaining the large volume of shells brough to West Africa and the cycles of inflation that followed. As they moved to the interior, the shells crossed several linguistic and cultural boundaries. In a vast zone the cowry coexisted not only with gold dust and imported silver coins but also with salt bars, brass in rods or in heavy horseshoe shapes referred to as manillas, locally produced iron and cloth currencies, beads, and other means of payment.”
[2]
[1]: (Yang 2019, 165) Yang, Bin. 2019. Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money: A Global History. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Yang/titleCreatorYear/items/I5DXF22V/item-list [2]: (Saul 2004, 73) Saul, Mahir. 2004. ‘Money in Colonial Transition: Cowries and Francs in West Africa’ American Anthropologist. Vol 106:1. Pp 71-84. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FKJJ3H49/collection |
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|
Cowry shells. “Cowry shells (mollusks of the species Cypriaea Moneta and annulus) originated in the Indian Ocean and were brought to West Africa in European ships, often after passing through auctions in Amsterdam or London. Jon Hogendorn and M. Johnson (1986) provide a thorough account of this history explaining the large volume of shells brough to West Africa and the cycles of inflation that followed. As they moved to the interior, the shells crossed several linguistic and cultural boundaries. In a vast zone the cowry coexisted not only with gold dust and imported silver coins but also with salt bars, brass in rods or in heavy horseshoe shapes referred to as manillas, locally produced iron and cloth currencies, beads, and other means of payment.”
[1]
[1]: (Saul 2004, 73) Saul, Mahir. 2004. ‘Money in Colonial Transition: Cowries and Francs in West Africa’ American Anthropologist. Vol 106:1. Pp 71-84. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FKJJ3H49/collection |
||||||
|
Cowry shells. “Cowry shells (mollusks of the species Cypriaea Moneta and annulus) originated in the Indian Ocean and were brought to West Africa in European ships, often after passing through auctions in Amsterdam or London. Jon Hogendorn and M. Johnson (1986) provide a thorough account of this history explaining the large volume of shells brough to West Africa and the cycles of inflation that followed. As they moved to the interior, the shells crossed several linguistic and cultural boundaries. In a vast zone the cowry coexisted not only with gold dust and imported silver coins but also with salt bars, brass in rods or in heavy horseshoe shapes referred to as manillas, locally produced iron and cloth currencies, beads, and other means of payment.”
[1]
[1]: (Saul 2004, 73) Saul, Mahir. 2004. ‘Money in Colonial Transition: Cowries and Francs in West Africa’ American Anthropologist. Vol 106:1. Pp 71-84. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FKJJ3H49/collection |
||||||
|
Cowry shells. “It was not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that cowrie shells were definitely recorded as being used as money in West Africa.”
[1]
“Cowry shells (mollusks of the species Cypriaea Moneta and annulus) originated in the Indian Ocean and were brought to West Africa in European ships, often after passing through auctions in Amsterdam or London. Jon Hogendorn and M. Johnson (1986) provide a thorough account of this history explaining the large volume of shells brough to West Africa and the cycles of inflation that followed. As they moved to the interior, the shells crossed several linguistic and cultural boundaries. In a vast zone the cowry coexisted not only with gold dust and imported silver coins but also with salt bars, brass in rods or in heavy horseshoe shapes referred to as manillas, locally produced iron and cloth currencies, beads, and other means of payment.”
[2]
[1]: (Yang 2019, 165) Yang, Bin. 2019. Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money: A Global History. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/search/Yang/titleCreatorYear/items/I5DXF22V/item-list [2]: (Saul 2004, 73) Saul, Mahir. 2004. ‘Money in Colonial Transition: Cowries and Francs in West Africa’ American Anthropologist. Vol 106:1. Pp 71-84. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FKJJ3H49/collection |
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The literature suggests that tokens were commonly used in culturally related and geographically adjacent polities in the Great Lakes region. In the case of Rwanda: "Neighbors exchanged goods by barter. Hunters, farmers, and herders exchanged game, leather goods, honey, sorghum, beans, milk, and butter, among other things. Iron objects and hoes above all were preferably exchanged for goats and if possible cattle, but sometimes also for the goods we have just enumerated. Indeed, the hoe was probably already the standard of value as it was in the nineteenth century."
[1]
In the case of Buganda: "As we have noted, pre-colonial Buganda never developed a purely monetary economy, and even during the later nineteenth century barter was an important method of exchange, existing alongside a cowry currency. Nevertheless, the information we have on nineteenth-century prices suggests that virtually everything had at least a nominal cowry value. Moreover, other currencies existed alongside cowries, and some undoubtedly pre-dated the latter. Roscoe mentions a "small ivory disc" which he terms ’sanga’, ssanga being the Luganda term for either a tusk or ivory in general. This, Roscoe claimed, was one of the earliest forms of money in Buganda; although clearly indigenous and probably much older than the cowry shell, it also had a cowry value. [...] A third pre-cowry currency has already been mentioned, namely the blue bead, and as we have also already noted, examples of beads have been excavated at Ntusi. From such archaeological evidence, it is possible to suggest that beads may be the oldest currency in the region."
[2]
[1]: (Vansina 2004: 30) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/5J4MRHUB/collection. [2]: (Reid 2010: 122, 126-127) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/2H64W34U/collection. |
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Cowries: “The first major imports of moneta cowries into West Africa via the Atlantic arrived in Benin from the Indian Ocean via Lisbon in 1515. The Benin political class, centered on the monarch, monopolized commercial activities with the European traders during the sixteenth century, and it was in that kingdom that we have the first evidence of the monetization of cowries in the Bight of Benin. From there, the monetization of cowries spread westwards following the sequence of African/European trading ports on the coast so that by the end of sixteenth century, cowry money had been adopted in Allada and was spreading to the Yoruba hinterlands. The impetus for the pan-regional adoption of cowry currency came from the imperial expansion of Old Oyo and Dahomey, the expansion of the local economy, and the high tide of cowry imports via coastal ports in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The sense that domestic economy in the Bight of Benin was almost entirely monetized by the seventeenth century is conveyed by Thomas Phillips, an English trader, who observed: "when they go to market [in Whydah] to buy anything they bargain for so many cowries ... and without these shells they can purchase nothing."56 The state, rather than Atlantic commerce itself, was responsible for the monetization of cowries by levying taxes and toll payments in cowries.’”
[1]
“Exports from the Slave Coast amounted to 5,000 captives per year in the 1680s, and peaked at 10,000 per year from the 1690s through the 1710s. Goods received in exchange for captives were predominantly textiles and cowry shells (Cypraea moneta), which originated in the Indian Ocean and were the principle currency in the region. However, other goods such as iron and brass bars, beads, guns and spirits are also mentioned in period texts. Additionally, beads, clay tobacco pipes, ceramic vessels, alcohol bottles and various other trinkets are documented at contemporary archaeological sites. The introduction of European and Asian manufactured goods had a significant impact on communities on the Slave Coast.”
[2]
“First, with regard to payment in cowry shells, Dapper had said that when cowries were available a third of the price was paid in them, but that when they were dear other goods were given instead, whereas according to Barbot normally half the price was paid in cowries, but when they were dear this might be reduced to a third or a quarter and the rest paid in other goods.”
[3]
Manillas and foreign currency (Dutch stuivers) are both mentioned here, but it’s unclear whether they were being used within Allada as currency, or only by the Dutch and/or Dahomeans: “In Allada in the mid-seventeenth century Dutch traders allowed the crews of the hammocks hired for journeys from the coast to the capital the sum of four brass manillas (equivalent to fifty cowries) per day for their food and drink. Since hammockmen were normally hired in crews of six, this suggests an allowance of eight or nine cowries daily per man. There are no comparable data on subsistence rates for free labourers later in the seventeenth century, but the cost of the diet of slaves awaiting embarkation was estimated by the English fort at Offra in 1681 at twenty cowries daily, and by Bosman at Whydah in the late 1690s at the even higher rate of two stuivers, equivalent to 2- English pence, or 32 cowries (perhaps an approximation for thirty) daily; and such slaves were certainly maintained at a more rudimentary level than free workers - on ’bread and water’, as Bosman himself expressed it. Phillips in 1694, it may be noted, reports the cost of a single meal of a dough ball (or ’cankey’) with meat (beef or dog) stew as eight or nine cowries. There had clearly been some increase in living costs, therefore, during the second half of the seventeenth century.”
[4]
“In the later stages of the nineteenth-century cowrie inflation, part of the loss of value of cowries in Dahomey was taken up by increasing the number of cowries in a string, the number of strings in a head remaining 50. Thus, at Whydah, instead of 40 cowries to the string there were 50; at Alladah and Abomey, 46. The ’royal’ string at this period was about 40.”
[5]
[1]: Ogundiran, Akinwumi. “Of Small Things Remembered: Beads, Cowries, and Cultural Translations of the Atlantic Experience in Yorubaland.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 35, no. 2/3, 2002, pp. 427–57: 438–439. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/57IPD2M5/collection [2]: Monroe, J. Cameron. “Urbanism on West Africa’s Slave Coast: Archaeology Sheds New Light on Cities in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade.” American Scientist, vol. 99, no. 5, 2011, pp. 400–09: 403. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/E5WA63Z2/collection [3]: Law, Robin. “Jean Barbot as a Source for the Slave Coast of West Africa.” History in Africa, vol. 9, 1982, pp. 155–73: 161. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/N4D6NU7J/collection [4]: Law, Robin. “Posthumous Questions for Karl Polanyi: Price Inflation in Pre-Colonial Dahomey.” The Journal of African History, vol. 33, no. 3, 1992, pp. 387–420: 411–412. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/VJ69UHEQ/collection [5]: Johnson, M. (1970). The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Part I. The Journal of African History, 11(1), 17–49: 45. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/XZMB8INB/collection |
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check for cowrie shells.
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check for cowrie shells.
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Sources do not suggest that monetary items have been found dating to this period.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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"Contemporary shipping contracts indicate that the Portuguese introduced the cowrie shell to West African commerce just after 1515 at the latest" . Cowrie used as medium-of-exchange.
[1]
Cowrie shells functioned as money. "The shells can be accurately traded by weight, by volume, and by counting; their colour and lustre do not fade as their durability compares favourably with that of metal coins."
[2]
Cowries at Awdaghurst "in the ninth to tenth centuries.... trading in them in the north in the eleventh century."
[3]
"D. Robert thinks that Awdaghurst may have been the source of the copper wire used as ’currency’ in Ghana."
[4]
[1]: (Reader 1998, 386-387) [2]: (Reader 1998, 387) [3]: (Devisse 1988, 421) [4]: (Devisse 1988, 422) |
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"Contemporary shipping contracts indicate that the Portuguese introduced the cowrie shell to West African commerce just after 1515 at the latest" . Cowrie used as medium-of-exchange.
[1]
Cowrie shells functioned as money. "The shells can be accurately traded by weight, by volume, and by counting; their colour and lustre do not fade as their durability compares favourably with that of metal coins."
[2]
Cowries at Awdaghurst "in the ninth to tenth centuries.... trading in them in the north in the eleventh century."
[3]
"D. Robert thinks that Awdaghurst may have been the source of the copper wire used as ’currency’ in Ghana."
[4]
[1]: (Reader 1998, 386-387) [2]: (Reader 1998, 387) [3]: (Devisse 1988, 421) [4]: (Devisse 1988, 422) |
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this is the code for the expert-checked Saite Period
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Sources do not suggest that monetary items have been found dating to this period.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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Sources do not suggest that monetary items have been found dating to this period.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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Sources do not suggest that monetary items have been found dating to this period.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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Sources do not suggest that monetary items have been found dating to this period.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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Although exchange of goods will have taken place, sources do not suggest that specific monetary items have been found dating to this period.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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Significant "wealth economy" in the form of precious feathered garments (cloaks, capes, helmets, lei) which was very important to the ruling elite (the ali’i).
[1]
This may be true of more recent periods, can it be extended backwards? Check with Patrick Kirch. AD
[1]: (Kirch 2016, personal communication) |
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Shell beads may have been tokens of exchange.
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Shell beads may have been tokens of exchange.
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Shell beads may have been tokens of exchange.
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"Based on Mesopotamian texts, the materials that did function in exchanges were "barley, lead, copper or bronze, tin, silver, gold... Barley, lead and copper or bronze...[were]...cheaper monies, tin was mid-range, silver and the much rarer gold were high-range monies" (Powell 1996: 227ff)... What distinguishes silver and barley from the materials listed, along with "cows, sheep, asses, slaves, household utensils" and other items, is that they possessed a common denominator for value based on systems of weighing, measuring, and possibly quality."
[1]
Monetary items were therefore present in the Indus area at this time, and presumed present at Nausharo in order to trade for foreign items
[2]
, but there direct evidence for ’money’ at Nausharo is lacking.
[1]: Wright, R. P. (2010) The Ancient Indus: urbanism, economy and society. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. p260 [2]: Wright, R. P. (2010) The Ancient Indus: urbanism, economy and society. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. p259 |
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"Based on Mesopotamian texts, the materials that did function in exchanges were "barley, lead, copper or bronze, tin, silver, gold... Barley, lead and copper or bronze...[were]...cheaper monies, tin was mid-range, silver and the much rarer gold were high-range monies" (Powell 1996: 227ff)... What distinguishes silver and barley from the materials listed, along with "cows, sheep, asses, slaves, household utensils" and other items, is that they possessed a common denominator for value based on systems of weighing, measuring, and possibly quality."
[1]
Monetary items were therefore present in the Indus area at this time, and presumed present at Nausharo in order to trade for foreign items
[2]
, but there direct evidence for ’money’ at Nausharo is lacking.
[1]: Wright, R. P. (2010) The Ancient Indus: urbanism, economy and society. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. p260 [2]: Wright, R. P. (2010) The Ancient Indus: urbanism, economy and society. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. p259 |
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Unknown in this period. "Within the Byzantine Empire, the billion trachy functioned as a virtual token or quasi-token coin. Its equivalence to the hyperpyron was legislated, and, in 1136, it was worth 1/48 of an hyperpyron, that is to say, one gold coin was worth 48 billion trachea or stamena. The intrinsic value of the billion trachy (based on its silver content) would have been much lower. It was, then, against this token coin that the denier and the mark were exchanged."
[1]
[1]: (Laiou 2001, 172) Laiou A E, Mottahedeh R P. 2001. The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World. Dumbarton Oaks. |
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Tokens are not mentioned in the sources consulted.
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Tokens have not been mentioned in the sources consulted.
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