Money is the thing we are most exposed to in our daily lives, and it is inseparable, although people often say that it is "something outside the body", but it is undeniable that most of us are fighting for it all our lives.
In fact, people have not shied away from it at all, and do not think that chasing money is a "very common" thing, because from ancient times to the present, people have been like this. Tai Shi Gong said: "The hustle and bustle of the world is for profit, and the world is all for profit", which can be described as the most reasonable saying that interprets money. So have you ever wondered what the ancient "money" looked like?
Image: Stills from the bustling bazaar
First, the formation of money in the early ancient period of our country
1. The emergence of a unified currency
Human society was the earliest without money, or there is no money, everyone is bartering, in the process of exchange, some things are more popular, and the value is easier to calculate, which slowly evolved into the earliest currency of human beings, which is dominated by various types of shells.
This is easy to understand, nowadays we all use shells as decorations, beautiful and recognizable, and the acceptance of the people is very high. In addition, the shell is hard, small and easy to carry, and will not spoil after a long time, so it is the best choice as a currency.
In addition, for ancient China, which was inland civilization, the shell was a less readily available thing, with a strong rarity, which ensured that it would not depreciate rapidly in a short period of time. In our ancient Chinese characters, many of them are related to money and wealth with shells, which is because the early currency was shells.
Image: Stills from trading shellfish
Later, the social productivity gradually rose, the function of shells as money was greatly reduced, at this time there was a metal minted currency, to the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, the metal texture of the currency type is very complex, the Central Plains countries have their own types, such as knife coins, cloth coins, grimace money and so on.
After Qin Shi Huang destroyed the Six Kingdoms to unify the Central Plains, he unified the national monetary system, that is, the circular square hole money, which had a great impact on later generations, and the shape system was used until the early years of the Republic of China.
Image: Stills of round square hole money
2. Establishment of the copper coin shape system
In the thousands of years from the Qin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, there were three main types of ancient currency forms in China, namely copper coins, paper money and silver. Ancient copper coins are relatively familiar to everyone, mainly round, with a small square hole in the middle.
Different dynasties called copper coins differently, such as the Qin Dynasty called "half two coins", and the Han Dynasty was called "five baht money", etc., of which this "five baht money" was used for a relatively long time, from the Han Wu Emperor to the Tang Gaozu years, a total of more than 700 years, is the longest used currency in China's history.
Image from the Internet: "Five Baht Money"
During the Tang Dynasty, a reform of the currency was carried out, and the "Kaiyuan Tongbao" was minted with a new formula, and this currency has a unique place, that is, it has a crescent pattern the size of a fingernail on the back, which is said to involve an interesting little story.
Legend has it that there was a concubine in the harem who idly took the wax sample of "new money" to watch, and one accidentally left his own nail marks on it, and the craftsmen thought that it was intentional, and did not dare to be sloppy, so they cast it according to this shape, and then the Tang Dynasty Kaiyuan Tongbao also had such a unique pattern on it.
However, later historians believe that the crescent pattern on this currency is likely to be formed by the influence of the Xingyue script commonly used in currencies in Western Persia and other countries, because the Tang Dynasty was a dynasty that was greatly influenced by the culture of the Western Regions. From this period onwards, the copper coins minted by later dynasties were called a certain tongbao or a certain yuanbao, which lasted for more than 1300 years.
Image: Screenshot of the "New Century Tongbao" profile
Second, the main currency of the late feudal era
1. Disadvantages of paper money
The last pure imperial copper coin in China's monetary history is the "Hongxian Tongbao" minted by the Beiyang leader Yuan Shikai during the restoration, after entering the Republic of China, Fujian also issued a currency called "Fujian Tongbao", in order to distinguish it from the copper coins of the feudal era, this currency adopted the shape of a circular round hole when minting, which belongs to a more special kind.
The mining capacity of ancient copper mines is very limited, and the demand for money in the market is large, so in the case of insufficient copper resources, there will be a problem of "money shortage", and sometimes the imperial court has to use iron money to supplement, this "strange" currency has continued intermittently for five or six hundred years.
In ancient times, there were also paper money, such as the "Jiaozi" of the Song Dynasty, the "Treasure Banknote" of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, etc., but in ancient times, there was no corresponding paper money issuance reserve mechanism and mechanism, so the lack of credit guarantees often ended up being waste paper, the Qing Dynasty learned a lesson, for the issuance of paper money is very conservative, almost no paper money appeared in the early Qing Dynasty.
Before the Song Dynasty, silver was basically not circulated in the market as currency, and the amount of silver in the two Song Dynasties was also very limited, like the phenomenon we see in TV dramas that people use silver for trading, which actually appeared after the Ming Dynasty.
Image: Screenshot of the Song Dynasty's "Jiaozi" profile
2, silver has become the "mainstream currency"
The reason why silver can become the main circulating currency is that Dahui believes that there are three reasons. First, before the Ming Dynasty, China's mining of silver was very limited, and if you wanted to use silver, you would have no goods on hand.
During the Ming Dynasty, with the opening of new shipping routes, a large amount of silver from the American continent flowed into China, which created conditions for silver to become the mainstream currency, and some scholars estimated that during the Ming Dynasty, the total amount of silver flowing into the country from overseas was about 14,000 tons, which was nearly 10 times that of the local silver produced at that time.
Image: Lots of silver stills
Second, the continuous improvement of social productivity has driven the commodity economy, which requires a large amount of money to settle, and the purchasing power of silver is obviously better than that of copper coins, which is more suitable for use in commodity trading.
Third, since the Ming Dynasty, monetary policy at the national level has changed. Although there was also a period of prohibition of silver in the early years of the Ming Dynasty and the use of paper money, but because the paper money itself did not have a strong preservation of value, the imperial court had to quickly lift the ban, and in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, under the role of Zhang Juzheng and other reformers, the imperial court began to encourage the use of silver as a settlement currency.
Image: Stills of buying something with silver
Under the influence of the above three reasons, silver officially became the most important circulating currency in China's ancient society, and soon formed a mature monetary system of "silver as the mainstay, copper coins supplemented by it", which was used until the late Qing Dynasty, so we can also call the Ming and Qing dynasties the "Silver Age" in China's history.
Article author: Dahui
The entire graphic was produced by the team of the Big Cafe Say History Studio!