Inspired by the wonderful #LockdownBestiary, I present #MoneyAtoZ
A is for Ancient Economy
B is for Bitoin
C is for Cowries (1/x)
A is for Ancient Economy
B is for Bitoin
C is for Cowries (1/x)
Cowries are sea snails (marine #gastropod #Cypraeidae) with smooth, shiny, roughly egg-shaped shells; the family is widespread, but so-called “money cowry” (named by Linnaeus, 1758) *farmed* in Indian Ocean off the Maldives Islands 2/x 
3/x Like silver, cowries are widely circulated monetary materials, but they come “alrady minted”! Their shells have been used as currency for millenia; 6900 of them in burial site of Lady/Fu Hao c. 1200 BCE; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_F…
Cowries continued to be used in Bengal, Yunnan, southeast Asia as currency (counted by 4s) well into modern era; in far SW Ming Empire (1500s), officials paid = parts rice/cowries; ethnic Han tried to intro bronze-copper cash but no one would accept them art-and-archaeology.com/china/kunming/…
5/x Ming authorities identified cowries as “barbarian money”: as imports, they were expensive + quantities limited; Ming argued cash from local copper would be more plentiful, cheaper money → greater prosperity; #EconomicStimulus #ShellsAreHardMoney jstor.org/stable/3632288…
A good intro to the global history of cowries as currency can be had in Bin Yang’s book @RoutledgeHist; 6/x routledge.com/Cowrie-Shells-…
7/x But cowries are most famous, important as “shell money of the slave trade” imported in enormous quantities from Maldives to Bengal, then to Europe as ballast in ships also carrying silks, spices etc; sold in north European markets
8/x cowries were re-exported from Europe to west Africa where paid for many of 12 million people sold into transatlantic slave trade; only in 18C (with plantation economies in Americas, Caribbean) did it become more profitable to ship slaves from “the Gold Coast” than gold
Hogendorn and Johnson’s Shell Money of Slave Trade remains foundational work on the topic; major new book is Toby Green’s Fistful of Shells, currently shortlisted for @WolfsonHistory prize. #MoneyAtoZ "C is for Cowries" 9/x here’s review in @TheTLS the-tls.co.uk/articles/capti…
10/x late 18-19C European monetary theory, early economists asserted shells were “primitive money,” proof of Africans’ backwardness. But the networks through which cowries imported, valued, used were not “African tradition” but imperial & historic. Increased inequality.
11/x Nor could Europeans do without! @KarinPallaver has shown, British Empire struggled to intro rupees in E Africa; official exchange rate 1r=800 cowries, but market goods selling for 5-10 cowries; 1893-6, Brit colonial staff allowance=7500 cowries/mo
bu.edu/phpbin/ijahs/p…
bu.edu/phpbin/ijahs/p…
12/x Cowries are neither primitive money, nor tradition, nor backward. There is now even a crypto-cowry! #Cowrium (Paging @jemimajoanna and @FTAlpha’s ICOmedy team)
cowrium.net
cowrium.net
13/x When I teach "History of Money" the course is roughly chronological, because that's how students recognize HISTORY. But I try very hard to push against ideas of "gradual change.... evolution... growth.... [and even] decline" as unitary phenomena, one-way developments.
14/14 #MoneyAtoZ disrupts chronology and "Whiggish" (progress identifying) expectations that accompany it. Because history of money is not one-way story from primitive to complex or substance-->abstraction but competition, social difference, circuits and spheres of use.
