Sea Shells and Shell Coins
Author: Yang Bin
Edition: Oracle Social Sciences Academic Press
November 2021
Tribute
Sea shells were originally the object of marine biology research, but they were salvaged from the ocean of time and space by historians, giving them a new meaning. As a symbol of wealth and power, the ancient aristocracy flocked to it and transported it thousands of miles. The obsession with seashells connected the world's earliest communication networks. Before gold and silver currencies dominated the world, haibei also played a pivotal role in global trade as shell coins, creating the first world monetary system in history. Through the sea shells, we get a glimpse of the grandest panoramic view of civilization in human history.
We pay tribute to "Haibei and Shell Coin", pay tribute to its historical writing of "to the vast and subtle", and pay tribute to the author's insight as a historian to explore the subtle. This book's analysis of the sea shell and the shell coin redefines the meaning of money from a historical perspective, and also allows us to re-examine the meaning of global trade. The desires and pursuits of human beings, the exchange and estrangement of civilizations, the excitement and suffering of the times, like the thin waves and waves on the sea, the sea shells in the book become the compass that guides the direction, leading the reader to the depths of the sea of history. Just as pearls are hidden in sea shells, the power to rewrite human civilization is often contained in the commonplace of ordinary things.
Thank you
"Haibei and Bei Coin: Little-known Global History" was selected as the "2021 Beijing News Annual Reading Recommendation", which was a surprise that I could not have imagined when I wrote. This is an unusually grand book, thousands of years up and down, spanning five continents and crossing three oceans. But it has been loved by the judges of the Beijing News, and I think it is not because of its grandeur, but because of its logic. Based on the history of money, the book presents a colorful picture in different time and space through maritime history, and finally summarizes the internal logic of the rise and fall of sea shells within the framework of global history, recreating a common trajectory of mutual interaction and transcending boundaries constructed by different societies based on a trivial marine life. Arguably, this book is an attempt to break through the traditional paradigm of historiography. Is the book an award, or is it an affirmation of the possibilities of global history?
——Yang Bin
Editor | Zhang Jin
Proofreading | Xue Jingning