PETER BOOMGAARD Early globalization Cowries as currency, 600 BCE-1900

Shell money

Unless you are a shell collector or a specialist in pre-modern and early modern monetary history of Asia (or Africa), chances are that you have never heard of cowries. Cowries are (usually) relatively small, pretty shells which look as if they are made out of porcelain. They can be found in many tropical seas. There are over 250 recognized species of cowrie (also spelled ‘cowry’), but this article deals mainly with two of them, Cypraea moneta and Cypraea annulus. The first and main protagonist is C. moneta, the money cowrie, as the scien- tific name already indicates. However, C. annulus (the ring cowrie), also used locally as money, is a good second, the more so as primary sources and litera- ture do not always make a distinction between the two. The two species were (and are) to be found in large sections of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, includ- ing areas along the shores of eastern Africa, Arabia, Persia, India, Southeast Asia, China, Oceania, and Australia.1 Cowries have served as ornaments and jewellery in countless societies, past and present. They have been valued by many civilizations since prehistoric times. They were given by rulers as prestige items to individuals, or donated to religious institutions. In addition to all this, the money cowrie and the ring cowrie have circulated as currencies in a number of economies, either alone, or in combination with precious and base metals, coined and uncoined. In historical times, the value of one single cowrie shell was usually very low, and people in those societies where they were legal tender walked around with strings of them, or even entire baskets. The cowries we are dealing with in this article had many characteristics in common with coins – they are dura- ble, they can be conveniently carried and stored, they are easily recognized, and for small purchases one could use one or a few shells. They could be ‘produced’ cheaply – usually cheaper than copper coins – and although it is not impossible, there was no point in counterfeiting them.

1 An excellent introduction to this topic is Hogendorn and Johnson 1986, on which much of the first sections of this chapter is based. Cowries (author’s collection)