Han (state)
Han was an ancient Chinese state during the Warring States period of ancient China. It is conventionally romanized by scholars as Hann to distinguish it from the Han Dynasty, it was located in central China in a region south and east of Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Zhou. It was ruled by a royal family who were former ministers in the state of Jin that had gained power from the Jin royal family until they were able to divide Jin into the three new states of Han and Zhao with the assistance of two other ministerial families; the state of Han was small and located in a unprofitable region. Its territory directly blocked the passage of the state of Qin into the North China Plain.. Although Han had attempted to reform its governance these reforms were not enough to defend itself and it was the first of the seven warring states to be conquered by Qin in 230 BC. Qin invasion of Han's Shangdang Commandery in 260 BC was the bloodiest battle of the Warring States period with the supposed death of 400 000 soldiers.
According to chapter 45 of the Records of the Grand Historian, the royal family of Han was a cadet branch of the royal family of the state of Jin. The founder of the Han clan Wuzi of Han was the uncle of Duke Wu of Jin. Members of the family were granted Hanyuan. During the Spring and Autumn period, members of the Han family gained more and more influence and power within Jin. In 403 BC, Jing of Han, along with Wen of Wei and Lie of Zhao partitioned Jin among themselves. In Chinese history, this Partition of Jin is the event which marks the end of the Spring and Autumn period and the beginning of the Warring States. Subsequently, Han was an independent polity. King Lie recognized the new states in 403 BC and elevated the rulers to 侯. Han's highest point occurred under the rule of Marquess Xi. Xi implemented his Legalist policies; these reforms strengthened its military capability. Under King Xuanhui, Han declared itself an independent kingdom. However, Han was disadvantaged in the competition of the Warring States because Jin's partition had left it surrounded on all sides by other strong states – Chu to the south, Qi to the east, Qin to the west, Wei to the north.
It was the smallest of the seven states and, without any easy way to expand its own territory and resources, it was bullied militarily by its more powerful neighbors. During its steady decline, Han lost the power to defend its territory and had to request military assistance from other states; the contest between Wei and Qi over control of Han resulted in the Battle of Maling, which established Qi as the pre-eminent state in the east. In 260 BC, Qin's invasion of Han led to Zhao the Battle of Changping. During the late years of the era, in an attempt to drain Qin's resources in an expensive public works project, the state of Han sent the civil engineer Zheng Guo to Qin to persuade them to build a canal; the scheme, while expensive, backfired spectacularly when it was completed: the irrigation abilities of the new Zhengguo Canal far outweighed its cost and gave Qin the agricultural and economic means to dominate the other six states. Han was the first to fall, in 230 BC. In 226 BC, former nobility of the Han launched a failed rebellion in former capital Xinzheng, King An, the last king of Han, was put to death the same year.
Han Xin was made "King of Han" by Liu Bang after the establishment of the Han dynasty. He was removed to Taiyuan Commandery and the territory of the kingdom of Dai, where he defected to the Xiongnu and led raids against the Han Dynasty until his death. Before the state of Qin unified China in 221 BC, each region had their own unique customs and culture, although they were all dominated by an upper class that shared a common culture. In the Yu Gong, a section of the Book of Documents, most composed in the 4th century BC, the author describes a China, divided into nine regions, each with its own distinctive peoples and products; the core theme of this section is that these nine regions are unified into one state by the travels of the eponymous sage, Yu the Great and by sending each region's unique goods to the capital as tribute. Other texts discussed these regional variations in culture and physical environments. One of these texts was Wuzi, a Warring States military treatise written in response to a query by Marquis Wu of Wei on how to cope with the other states.
Wu Qi, the author of the work, declared that the government and nature of the people were linked to the physical environment and territory they live in. Han Fei, a Legalist philosopher Zhang Liang, a major figure in the early Han dynasty Zheng Guo, the hydraulic engineer who designed the Zhengguo Canal for Qin Han is represented by the star 35 Capricorni in the "Twelve States" asterism, part of the "Girl" lunar mansion in the "Black Turtle" symbol. Han is represented by the star Zeta Ophiuchi in the "Right Wall" asterism, part of the "Heavenly Market" enclosure. Chinese nobility Sima Qian. Records of the Grand Historian, Ch. 45 Zizhi Tongjian Volumes 1-6
Zhejiang
Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of China. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiangsu and Shanghai to the north, Anhui to the northwest, Jiangxi to the west, Fujian to the south. To the east is the East China Sea, beyond which lie the Ryukyu Islands of Japan; the province's name derives from the Zhe River, the former name of the Qiantang River which flows past Hangzhou and whose mouth forms Hangzhou Bay. It is understood as meaning "Crooked" or "Bent River", from the meaning of Chinese 折, but is more a phono-semantic compound formed from adding 氵 to phonetic 折, preserving a proto-Wu name of the local Yue, similar to Yuhang and Jiang. Kuahuqiao culture was an early Neolithic culture that flourished in the Hangzhou area in 6,000-5,000 BC. Zhejiang was the site of the Neolithic cultures of the Liangzhu; the area of modern Zhejiang was outside the major sphere of influence of the Shang civilization during the second millennium BC. Instead, this area was populated by peoples collectively known as the Ouyue.
The kingdom of Yue began to appear in the chronicles and records written during the Spring and Autumn period. According to the chronicles, the kingdom of Yue was in northern Zhejiang. Shiji claims; the "Song of the Yue Boatman" was transliterated into Chinese and recorded by authors in north China or inland China of Hebei and Henan around 528 BC. The song shows that the Yue people spoke a language, mutually unintelligible with the dialects spoken in north and inland China; the Sword of Goujian bears bird-worm seal script. Yuenü was a swordswoman from the state of Yue. To check the growth of the kingdom of Wu, Chu pursued a policy of strengthening Yue. Under King Goujian, Yue recovered from its early reverses and annexed the lands of its rival in 473 BC; the Yue kings moved their capital center from their original home around Mount Kuaiji in present-day Shaoxing to the former Wu capital at present-day Suzhou. With no southern power to turn against Yue, Chu opposed it directly and, in 333 BC, succeeded in destroying it.
Yue's former lands were annexed by the Qin Empire in 222 BC and organized into a commandery named for Kuaiji in Zhejiang but headquartered in Wu in Jiangsu. Kuaiji Commandery was the initial power base for Xiang Liang and Xiang Yu's rebellion against the Qin Empire which succeeded in restoring the kingdom of Chu but fell to the Han. Under the Later Han, control of the area returned to the settlement below Mount Kuaiji but authority over the Minyue hinterland was nominal at best and its Yue inhabitants retained their own political and social structures. At the beginning of the Three Kingdoms era, Zhejiang was home to the warlords Yan Baihu and Wang Lang prior to their defeat by Sun Ce and Sun Quan, who established the Kingdom of Wu. Despite the removal of their court from Kuaiji to Jianye, they continued development of the region and benefitted from influxes of refugees fleeing the turmoil in northern China. Industrial kilns were established and trade reached as far as Manchuria and Funan. Zhejiang was part of the Wu during the Three Kingdoms.
Wu known as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, had been the economically most developed state among the Three Kingdoms. The historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms records that Zhejiang had the best-equipped, strong navy force; the story depicts how the states of Wei and Shu, lack of material resources, avoided direct confrontation with the Wu. In armed military conflicts with Wu, the two states relied intensively on tactics of camouflage and deception to steal Wu's military resources including arrows and bows. Despite the continuing prominence of Nanjing, the settlement of Qiantang, the former name of Hangzhou, remained one of the three major metropolitan centers in the south to provide major tax revenue to the imperial centers in the north China; the other two centers in the south were Chengdu. In 589, Qiantang was renamed Hangzhou. Following the fall of Wu and the turmoil of the Wu Hu uprising against the Jin dynasty, most of elite Chinese families had collaborated with the non-Chinese rulers and military conquerors in the north.
Some may have lost social privilege, took refugee in areas south to Yangtze River. Some of the Chinese refugees from north China might have resided in areas near Hangzhou. For example, the clan of Zhuge Liang, a chancellor of the state of Shu Han from Central Plain in north China during the Three Kingdoms period, gathered together at the suburb of Hangzhou, forming an exclusive, closed village Zhuge Village, consisting of villagers all with family name "Zhuge"; the village has intentionally isolated itself from the surrounding communities for centuries to this day, only came to be known in public. It suggests that a small number of powerful, elite Chinese refugees from the Central Plain might have taken refugee in south of the Yangtze River. However, considering the mountainous geography and relative lack of agrarian lands in Zhejiang, most of these refugees might have resided in some areas in south China beyond Zhejiang, where fertile agrarian lands and metropolitan resources were available southern Jiangsu, eastern Fujian, Hunan and provinces where less cohesive, organized r
Wang Mang
Wang Mang, courtesy name Jujun, was a Han Dynasty official and consort kin who seized the throne from the Liu family and founded the Xin Dynasty, ruling 9–23 AD. The Han dynasty was restored after his overthrow, his rule marks the separation between the Western Han Dynasty and Eastern Han Dynasty; some historians have traditionally viewed Wang as a usurper, while others have portrayed him as a visionary and selfless social reformer. Though a learned Confucian scholar who sought to implement the harmonious society he saw in the classics, his efforts ended in chaos. In October 23 AD, the capital Chang'an was attacked and the imperial palace ransacked. Wang Mang died in the battle; the Han dynasty was reestablished in 25 AD. Wang Mang was the son of Wang Man, the younger brother of Empress Wang Zhengjun, his wife Qu, born in 45 BC, his lineage can be traced back to the kings of Qi, whose descendants changed their surname to Wang as Qi locals referred to them as the "royal family". Wang Man died early, while Wang Mang was young, before Emperor Cheng took the throne and his mother Empress Wang became empress dowager.
Unlike most of his brothers, Wang Man did not have the opportunity to become a marquess. Empress Wang took pity on his family, after she herself was widowed, had Qu moved to the imperial palace to live with her. While Wang Mang was well-connected to the imperial family, he did not have nearly the luxuries that his cousins enjoyed. Indeed, unlike his relatives who lived expensively and competed with each other on how they could spend more, Wang Mang was praised for his humility and desire to study, he wore those of a young Confucian scholar. He was praised on how filial he was to his mother and how caring he was to his deceased brother Wang Yong's wife and son Wang Guang. Wang Mang served his uncles carefully; when Wang Mang's powerful uncle Wang Feng grew ill, Wang Mang cared for him near his sick bed day and night, attended to his medical and personal needs. Wang Feng was touched, before his death, he asked Empress Dowager Wang and Emperor Cheng to take good care of Wang Mang. Wang Mang was therefore given the post of imperial attendant and promoted to be one of the subcommanders of the imperial guards.
In 16 BC, another of Wang Mang's uncles, Wang Shang the Marquess of Chengdu, submitted a petition to divide part of his march and to create Wang Mang a marquess. Several well-regarded officials concurred in this request, Emperor Cheng was impressed with Wang Mang's reputation, he therefore created Wang Mang the Marquess of Xindu and promoted him to the Chamberlain for Attendants. It was described by historians that the greater the posts that Wang was promoted to, the more humble he grew, he did not accumulate wealth, but used the money to support scholars and to give gifts to colleagues, so he gained more and more praise. Another thing that Wang Mang made himself known for was that he had only a single wife, Lady Wang, no concubines. However, as events would show, Wang was not faithful to his wife at this time. Emperor Cheng appointed his uncles, one after another, to be commander of the armed forces, speculation grew as to who would succeed Wang Mang's youngest surviving uncle, Wang Gen. Wang Mang was considered one of the possibilities, while another was his cousin Chunyu Zhang, who had a much closer personal relationship to Emperor Cheng than Wang Mang did.
Chunyu had friendly relations with both Emperor Cheng's wife Empress Zhao Feiyan and his deposed former wife Empress Xu. To overcome Chunyu's presumptive hold on succeeding Wang Gen, Wang Mang took action, he collected evidence that Chunyu, a frivolous man in his words and deeds, had secretly received bribes from the deposed Empress Xu and had promised to help her become "left empress", that he had promised his associates great posts once he succeeded Wang Gen. In 8 BC, he informed Wang Gen and Empress Dowager Wang of the evidence, both Wang Gen and Empress Dowager Wang were displeased, they exiled Chunyu back to his march. Chunyu, before he left the capital, gave his horses and luxurious carriages to his cousin Wang Rong – the son of his uncle Wang Li, with whom he had a running feud. Wang Li, happy with Chunyu's gift, submitted a petition requesting that Chunyu be allowed to remain at the capital—which drew Emperor Cheng's suspicion, because he knew of the feud between Wang Li and Chunyu, he ordered Wang Rong to be arrested, Wang Li, in his panic, ordered his son to commit suicide—which in turn caused Emperor Cheng to become more suspicious.
He therefore had Chunyu interrogated. Chunyu admitted to deceiving Empress Xu and receiving bribes from her, he was executed. In 8 BC, Wang Gen, by seriously ill, submitted his resignation and requested that Wang Mang succeed him. In winter 8 BC, Emperor Cheng made Wang Mang the commander of the armed forces, at the age of 37. After Wang Mang was promoted to this position—effectively the highest in the imperial government—he became better known for his self-discipline and promotion of capable
Shandong
Shandong is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China, is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River, it has served as a pivotal cultural and religious center for Taoism, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism. Shandong's Mount Tai is the most revered mountain of Taoism and one of the world's sites with the longest history of continuous religious worship; the Buddhist temples in the mountains to the south of the provincial capital of Jinan were once among the foremost Buddhist sites in China. The city of Qufu is the birthplace of Confucius, was established as the center of Confucianism. Shandong's location at the intersection of ancient as well as modern north–south and east–west trading routes have helped to establish it as an economic center. After a period of political instability and economic hardship that began in the late 19th century, Shandong has emerged as one of the most populous and most affluent provinces in the People's Republic of China with a GDP of CNY¥5.942 trillion in 2014, or USD$967 billion, making it China's third wealthiest province.
Individually, the two Chinese characters in the name "Shandong" mean "mountain" and "east". Shandong could hence be translated as "east of the mountains" and refers to the province's location to the east of the Taihang Mountains. A common nickname for Shandong is Qílǔ, after the States of Qi and Lu that existed in the area during the Spring and Autumn period. Whereas the State of Qi was a major power of its era, the State of Lu played only a minor role in the politics of its time. Lu, became renowned for being the home of Confucius and hence its cultural influence came to eclipse that of the State of Qi; the cultural dominance of the State of Lu heritage is reflected in the official abbreviation for Shandong, "鲁". English speakers in the 19th century called the province Shan-tung; the province is on the eastern edge of the North China Plain and in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, extends out to sea as the Shandong Peninsula. Shandong borders the Bohai Sea to the north, Hebei to the northwest, Henan to the west, Jiangsu to the south, the Yellow Sea to the southeast.
With its location on the eastern edge of the North China Plain, Shandong was home to a succession of Neolithic cultures for millennia, including the Houli culture, the Beixin culture, the Dawenkou culture, the Longshan culture, the Yueshi culture. The earliest dynasties exerted varying degrees of control over western Shandong, while eastern Shandong was inhabited by the Dongyi peoples who were considered "barbarians". Over subsequent centuries, the Dongyi were sinicized. During the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, regional states became powerful. At this time, Shandong was home to two major states: the state of Qi at Linzi and the state of Lu at Qufu. Lu is noted for being the home of Confucius; the state was, comparatively small, succumbed to the larger state of Chu from the south. The state of Qi, on the other hand, was a major power throughout the period. Cities it ruled included Jimo and Ju; the Qin dynasty conquered Qi and founded the first centralized Chinese state in 221 BCE.
The Han dynasty that followed created a number of commanderies supervised by two regions in what is now modern Shandong: Qingzhou in the north and Yanzhou in the south. During the division of the Three Kingdoms, Shandong belonged to the Cao Wei, which ruled over northern China. After the Three Kingdoms period, a brief period of unity under the Western Jin dynasty gave way to invasions by nomadic peoples from the north. Northern China, including Shandong, was overrun. Over the next century or so Shandong changed hands several times, falling to the Later Zhao Former Yan Former Qin Later Yan Southern Yan the Liu Song dynasty, the Northern Wei dynasty, the first of the Northern dynasties during the Northern and Southern dynasties Period. Shandong stayed with the Northern dynasties for the rest of this period. In 412 CE, the Chinese Buddhist monk Faxian landed at Laoshan, on the southern edge of the Shandong peninsula, proceeded to Qingzhou to edit and translate the scriptures he had brought back from India.
The Sui dynasty reestablished unity in 589, the Tang dynasty presided over the next golden age of China. For the earlier part of this period Shandong was ruled as part of Henan Circuit, one of the circuits. On China splintered into warlord factions, resulting in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Shandong was part of all based in the north; the Song dynasty reunified China in the late tenth century. The classic novel Water Margin was based on folk tales of outlaw bands active in Shandong during the Song dynasty. In 1996, the discovery of over two hundred buried Buddhist statues at Qingzhou was hailed as a major archaeological find; the statues included early examples of painted figures, are thought to have been buried due to Emperor Huizong's repression of Buddhism. The Song dynasty was forced to cede northern China to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1142. Shandong was administered by the Jin as Shandong East Circuit and Shandong West Circuit – the first use of its current name; the modern provinc
Shanxi
Shanxi is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋", after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn period; the name Shanxi means "West of the Mountains", a reference to the province's location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west, Inner Mongolia to the north and is made up of a plateau bounded by mountain ranges; the capital of the province is Taiyuan. During xia dynasty （ existed from 2070 bc-1600 bc), or 2030 bc--1600 bc, the capital city moved one capital situate in nowadays Yuncheng and nowadays Linfen In the Spring and Autumn period, the state of Jin was located in what is now Shanxi Province, it underwent a three-way split into the states of Han and Wei in 403 BC, the traditional date taken as the start of the Warring States period. By 221 BC, all of these states had fallen to the state of Qin; the Han Dynasty ruled Shanxi as the province of Bingzhou.
During the invasion of northern nomads in the Sixteen Kingdoms period, several regimes including the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, Later Yan continuously controlled Shanxi. They were followed by Northern Wei, a Xianbei kingdom, which had one of its earlier capitals at present-day Datong in northern Shanxi, which went on to rule nearly all of northern China; the Tang Dynasty originated in Taiyuan. During the Tang Dynasty and after, present day Shanxi was called Hédōng, or "east of the river". Empress Wu Zetian, China's only female ruler, was born in Shanxi in 624. During the first part of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Shanxi supplied rulers of three of the Five Dynasties, as well as being the only one of the Ten Kingdoms located in northern China. Shanxi was home to the jiedushi of Hedong, Li Cunxu, who overthrew the first of the Five Dynasties, Later Liang to establish the second, Later Tang. Another jiedushi of Hedong, Shi Jingtang, overthrew Later Tang to establish the third of the Five Dynasties, Later Jin, yet another jiedushi of Hedong, Liu Zhiyuan, established the fourth of the Five Dynasties after the Khitans destroyed Later Jin, the third.
When the fifth of the Five Dynasties emerged, the jiedushi of Hedong at the time, Liu Chong and established an independent state called Northern Han, one of the Ten Kingdoms, in what is now northern and central Shanxi. Shi Jingtang, founder of the Later Jin, the third of the Five Dynasties, ceded a piece of northern China to the Khitans in return for military assistance; this territory, called The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, included a part of northern Shanxi. The ceded territory became a major problem for China's defense against the Khitans for the next 100 years, because it lay south of the Great Wall; the Zhou, the last dynasty of the Five Dynasties period was founded by Guo Wei, a Han Chinese, who served as the Assistant Military Commissioner at the court of the Later Han, ruled by Shatuo Turks. He founded his dynasty by launching a military coup against the Turkic Later Han Emperor, however his newly established dynasty was short lived and was conquered by the Song Dynasty in 960. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of contention between Song China and the Liao Dynasty.
The Southern Song Dynasty abandoned all of North China, including Shanxi, to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1127 after the Jingkang Incident of the Jin-Song wars. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty did not establish Shanxi as a province. Shanxi only gained its present name and approximate borders during the Ming Dynasty which were of the same landarea and borders as the previous Hedong Commandery that existed during the Tang Dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, Shanxi extended north beyond the Great Wall to include parts of Inner Mongolia, including what is now the city of Hohhot, overlapped with the jurisdiction of the Eight Banners and the Guihua Tümed banner in that area. With the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Shanxi became part of the newly established Republic of China. During most of the Republic of China's period of rule over mainland China, the warlord Yan Xishan controlled Shanxi. Yan Xishan devoted himself to modernizing Shanxi and developing its resources during his reign over the province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japan occupied much of the province after winning the Battle of Taiyuan.
Shanxi was a major battlefield between the Japanese and the Chinese communist guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army during the war. The soldiers of Shanxi province under Yan Xishan viciously fought against the invading Japanese, which impressed the Japanese to say that nowhere in China did people fight so heroically and bravely. Right after the defeat of Japan, much of the Shanxi countryside became important bases for the communist People's Liberation Army in the ensuing Chinese Civil War. Yan had incorporated thousands of former Japanese soldiers into his own forces to fight against the communists, these soldiers became part of his failed defense of Taiyuan against the People's Liberation Army in early 1949. Shanxi was conquered by the communists, resulting in the warlord Yan Xishan's retreat to Taiwan Island. In September, Shanxi Provincial People's Government was established. For centuries, Shanxi
Commodity money
Commodity money is money whose value comes from a commodity of which it is made. Commodity money consists of objects that have value in themselves as well as value in their use as money. Examples of commodities that have been used as mediums of exchange include gold, copper, peppercorns, large stones, decorated belts, alcohol, cannabis, candy, cocoa beans and barley; these items were sometimes used in a metric of perceived value in conjunction to one another, in various commodity valuation or price system economies. Commodity money is to be distinguished from representative money, a certificate or token which can be exchanged for the underlying commodity, but only as the trade is good for that source and the product. A key feature of commodity money is that the value is directly perceived by the users of this money, who recognize the utility or beauty of the tokens as they would recognize the goods themselves; that is, the effect of holding a token for a barrel of oil must be the same economically as having the barrel at hand.
This thinking guides the modern commodity markets, although they use a sophisticated range of financial instruments that are more than one-to-one representations of units of a given type of commodity. Since payment by commodity provides a useful good, commodity money is similar to barter, but is distinguishable from it in having a single recognized unit of exchange. Described the establishment of commodity money in P. O. W camps. People left their surplus clothing, toilet requisites and food there until they were sold at a fixed price in cigarettes. Only sales in cigarettes were accepted – there was no barter Of food, the shop carried small stocks for convenience, thus the cigarette attained its fullest currency status, the market was completely unified. Radford documented the way that this'cigarette currency' was subject to Gresham's law and deflation. In another example, in US prisons, after smoking was banned circa 2003, commodity money has switched in many places to cans or foil pouches of mackerel fish fillets, which have a standard cost and are easy to store.
These may be exchanged for many services in prisons where personal possession of currency is prohibited. In situations where the commodity is metal gold or silver, a government mint will coin money by placing a mark on the metal that serves as a guarantee of the weight and purity of the metal. In doing so, the government will impose a fee, known as seigniorage; the role of a mint and of coin differs between fiat money. In situations where there is commodity money, the coin retains its value if it is melted and physically altered, while in a fiat money it does not. In a fiat money the value drops if the coin is converted to metal, but in a few cases the value of metals in fiat moneys have been allowed to rise to values larger than the face value of the coin. In India, for example fiat Rupees disappeared from the market after 2007 when their content of stainless steel became larger than the fiat or face value of the coins. In the US, the metal in pennies and nickels has a value close to, sometimes exceeding, the fiat face value of the coin.
Commodities come into being in situations where other forms of money are not available or not trusted. Various commodities were used in pre-Revolutionary America including wampum, iron nails, beaver pelts, tobacco. According to economist Murray Rothbard: In the sparsely settled American colonies, money, as it always does, arose in the market as a useful and scarce commodity and began to serve as a general medium of exchange. Thus, beaver fur and wampum were used as money in the north for exchanges with the Indians, fish and corn served as money. Rice was used as money in South Carolina, the most widespread use of commodity money was tobacco, which served as money in Virginia; the pound-of-tobacco was the currency unit in Virginia, with warehouse receipts in tobacco circulating as money backed 100 percent by the tobacco in the warehouse. In Canada, where the Hudson's Bay Company and other fur trading companies controlled most of the country, fur traders realized that gold and silver were of no interest to the First Nations.
They wanted goods such as metal axes. Rather than use a barter system, the fur traders established the beaver pelt as the standard currency, created a price list for goods: 5 pounds of sugar cost 1 beaver pelt 2 scissors cost 1 beaver pelt 20 fish hooks cost 1 beaver pelt 1 pair of shoes cost 1 beaver pelt 1 gun cost 12 beaver peltsOther animal furs were convertible into beaver pelts at a standard rate as well, so this created a viable currency in a primitive economy with limited supplies of gold and other kinds of money, but numerous fur-bearing animals; the Fort Knox gold repository long maintained by the United States, functioned as a theoretical backing for federally issued "gold certificates" to substitute for the gold. Between 1933 and 1970, one U. S. dollar was technically worth 1/35 of a troy ounce of gold. However, actual trade in gold bullion as a precious metal within the United States was banned after 1933, with the explicit purpose of preventing the "hoarding" of private gold during an economic depression period in which maximal circulation of money was desired by influential economists.
This was a typical transition from commodity to repres
Barter
In trade, barter is a system of exchange where participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists distinguish barter from gift economies in many ways. Barter takes place on a bilateral basis, but may be multilateral. In most developed countries, barter only exists parallel to monetary systems to a limited extent. Market actors use barter as a replacement for money as the method of exchange in times of monetary crisis, such as when currency becomes unstable or unavailable for conducting commerce. Economists since the times of Adam Smith, looking at non-specific pre-modern societies as examples, have used the inefficiency of barter to explain the emergence of money, of "the" economy, hence of the discipline of economics itself. However, ethnographic studies have shown that no present or past society has used barter without any other medium of exchange or measurement, nor have anthropologists found evidence that money emerged from barter, instead finding that gift-giving was the most usual means of exchange of goods and services.
Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, sought to demonstrate that markets pre-existed the state, hence should be free of government regulation. He argued. Markets emerged, in his view, out of the division of labour, by which individuals began to specialize in specific crafts and hence had to depend on others for subsistence goods; these goods were first exchanged by barter. Specialization depended on trade, but was hindered by the "double coincidence of wants" which barter requires, i.e. for the exchange to occur, each participant must want what the other has. To complete this hypothetical history, craftsmen would stockpile one particular good, be it salt or metal, that they thought no one would refuse; this is the origin of money according to Smith. Money, as a universally desired medium of exchange, allows each half of the transaction to be separated. Barter is characterized in Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" by a disparaging vocabulary: "higgling, swapping, dickering." It has been characterized as negative reciprocity, or "selfish profiteering."Anthropologists have argued, in contrast, "that when something resembling barter does occur in stateless societies it is always between strangers."
Barter occurred between strangers, not fellow villagers, hence cannot be used to naturalistically explain the origin of money without the state. Since most people engaged in trade knew each other, exchange was fostered through the extension of credit. Marcel Mauss, author of'The Gift', argued that the first economic contracts were to not act in one's economic self-interest, that before money, exchange was fostered through the processes of reciprocity and redistribution, not barter. Everyday exchange relations in such societies are characterized by generalized reciprocity, or a non-calculative familial "communism" where each takes according to their needs, gives as they have. Since direct barter does not require payment in money, it can be utilized when money is in short supply, when there is little information about the credit worthiness of trade partners, or when there is a lack of trust between those trading. Barter is an option to those who cannot afford to store their small supply of wealth in money in hyperinflation situations where money devalues quickly.
The limitations of barter are explained in terms of its inefficiencies in facilitating exchange in comparison to money. It is said that barter is'inefficient' because: There needs to be a'double coincidence of wants' For barter to occur between two parties, both parties need to have what the other wants. There is no common measure of value In a monetary economy, money plays the role of a measure of value of all goods, so their values can be assessed against each other. Indivisibility of certain goods If a person wants to buy a certain amount of another's goods, but only has for payment one indivisible unit of another good, worth more than what the person wants to obtain, a barter transaction cannot occur. Lack of standards for deferred payments This is related to the absence of a common measure of value, although if the debt is denominated in units of the good that will be used in payment, it is not a problem. Difficulty in storing wealth If a society relies on perishable goods, storing wealth for the future may be impractical.
However, some barter economies rely on durable goods like sheep or cattle for this purpose. Other anthropologists have questioned whether barter is between "total" strangers, a form of barter known as "silent trade". Silent trade called silent barter, dumb barter, or depot trade, is a method by which traders who cannot speak each other's language can trade without talking. However, Benjamin Orlove has shown that while barter occurs through "silent trade", it occurs in commercial markets as well. "Because barter is a difficult way of conducting trade, it will occur only where there are strong institutional constraints on the use of money or where the barter symbolically denotes a special social relationship and is used in well-defined conditions. To sum up, multipurpose money in markets is like lubrication for machines - necessary for the
