Money in Other Societies Traditional Means of Payment from the Kuhn Collection By Ursula Kampmann Impressum All rights reserved Any form of reprint as well as the reproduction in television, radio, film, sound or picture storage media and the storage and dissemination in electronic media or use for talks, including extracts, are only permissible with formal written approval of the publisher. 1st edition April 2011 © MoneyMuseum by Sunflower Foundation Verena-Conzett-Strasse 7 Postfach 9628 CH-8036 Zürich Exhibit images: Archive MoneyMuseum Typeset and produced by Sergeant AG, Zürich Printed and bound by Outbòx GmbH, Liebefeld BE Printed in Switzerland Available for free at MoneyMuseum Hadlaubstrasse 106 CH-8006 Zürich Phone: +41 (0)44 350 73 80, Bureau: +41 (0)44 242 76 54 For further information, please go to www.moneymuseum.com and to the media page of www.sunflower.ch Contents What Is Money? ............................................................................... 4 Are Traditional Means of Payment Money in This Sense? ................ 5 The Kuhn Collection ........................................................................ 5 A Rough Division ............................................................................. 6 Almost a Coin: The Cowrie .............................................................. 7 Money to Spend ............................................................................... 8 Bars of Money—the Nearest Relative to Our Coins ...................... 11 Jewellery as Money—Decorative Money ........................................ 15 Bride Price ...................................................................................... 20 Senseless Money? ........................................................................... 21 And in Europe? .............................................................................. 27 Further Reading ............................................................................. 28 4 What Is Money? It is incredible what has served other peoples as a means of payment at different times! Beetles’ legs and snails, shells and bars of salt, stone axes and glass pearls, all of which are really exotic. It is hard to imagine how people on the market could buy their daily food—and indeed traditional means of pay- ment are quite different from our money in the West. In order to understand where the difference lies you first have to con- sider what characterises our money. Our money, the economists determine, has four purposes. It serves as a means of exchange to make trading easier. We use it to measure the value of goods and services. Thus we deposit assets which we do not need for the time being. And with money we can make up for misdemeanours. Actually anything can be used as money. That in our case metal discs and pieces of paper have become accepted was not compelling. Any object can be used to function as money temporarily as soon as a society agrees to it. If a group of participants in the market today laid down that a red crayon is worth 10, a yellow one 5 and a blue one 100 units, then within this group coloured crayons would function in the same way as money like dollars or euros. A good example of such an unwritten agreement is known from Germany in the time after the Second World War, when the entire black market was founded on the “cigarette currency.” Today our life is based on money. We have to buy every- thing necessary for life by means of money. Money guarantees us independence from other people. Whoever has only a little money is poor in our world, whoever has none cannot survive. 5 Are Traditional Means of Payment Money in This Sense? Means of exchange, standards of value, means of safekeeping and penalties for wrong doing: do all these four characteristic features hold true for every traditional means of payment? Certainly not. Money in various societies is not the same as money. Not all traditional means of payment were used in the same way. They are closely connected to the society in which they served as a means of payment. Their use was usually connected to quite definite ceremonies and frequently served to strengthen the ties within a community. The forms of money brought together in the Kuhn Collec- tion come from all parts of the world. It is almost impossible to say anything universally valid about objects which come from such different connections. At most it could be stressed that the societies which had closer trading contacts with the West developed forms of money which are closer to our under- standing of money than the traditional means of payment which came from societies that used them only among them- selves. So let us therefore look at how the different forms of money functioned with the help of concrete examples. The Kuhn Collection For this purpose the MoneyMuseum was able to acquire part of the collection of Günter Kuhn of Munich. Mr. Kuhn, who was also involved professionally in money, collected in the second generation. He was able to take over part of the collection from his father. The objects had been brought together since the 1950s and represent a rather impressive ensemble. 6 Two especially spectacular objects—the feather money and the Ethiopian ammunition pouch—come from the Thomas Lautz Collection in Cologne. This collector was at the same time involved in field research. The enthusiastic cosmopolitan died in 2009 while on a journey into the interior of China. A Rough Division There are many possible ways of making a rough division of the various traditional forms of money. In this brochure we have chosen the original purpose of the objects and divided them into the following groups: – Forms of money which also served as commodities (see “Money to Spend,” page 8) – Forms of money which developed from bars of money (see “Bars of Money,” page 11) – Forms of money that could be used as jewellery (see “Jewellery as Money,” page 15) – Forms of money for no visible purpose (see “Senseless Money?” page 21) Many of the pieces on display cannot be assigned to just one category. This is not surprising: the societies which once prod- uced or used these traditional means of money did not adhere to definitions, but, for purposes of barter, used whatever had turned out to be valuable for generations. At the same time such items could change their function and thus their category. Let us take, for example, the manillas, bronze bangles that were used by the European traders in African transactions. While they were first regarded as decoration, they developed into bars of money of a standardised size. These bars still had the form of bracelets, but they were usually so small or so large that nobody could wear them as bracelets any longer. 7 Almost a Coin: The Cowrie Exhibit no. 31: China, cowrie (Cypraea annulus) The most important traditional means of payment was and still is the shell of the Cypraea moneta or the Cypraea annu- lus, which in time and geography has made a career for itself that can certainly compete with the European coin. Exhibit no. 3 : China, cowrie (Cypraea annulus) Cowries were in use as long ago as 3,500 years in China, from where they spread out to India, Thailand and other eastern Asiatic regions. In the South Sea, cowries were a popular means of payment that was partly used in some areas up into the 20th century. Cowries were also used as money in Africa into the last century. There, through the intervention of the Europeans, they experienced inflation, such as we otherwise experience from currencies that are based on paper money. In 1810 the price of a bride in Uganda was 30 cowries, in 1857 a would-be husband had to pay 10,000 cowries. It was the imports by European dealers that were responsible for this inflation, so that they could use the money to pay for the much sought-after ivory and the necessary slaves. Nevertheless, cowries were still being used up into the 20th century as a popular form of small change. Thus in 1960 1 The number refers in each case to the exhibit displayed in the MoneyMuseum’s exhibition Traditional Currencies from Africa, Asia and Oceania. 8 Dutch scientists had to interrupt their expedition into inner New Guinea to fetch cowries from East Africa to pay their porters. Money to Spend There are many materials which everyone needs, which are in short supply and which, if they are durable, can thus take over the function of money. The cigarette currency, mentioned above, is linked up with this. At the same time, however, we know many other materials that have achieved the character of money now and then. Exhibit no. 8: Central America, cocoa beans The Aztec elite used cocoa beans to pay wages. They controlled this currency, which also served as small change at the market, for the cocoa bean did not thrive in Mexico’s central high- lands, but grew only in tropical areas, where it was cultivated in small plantations like gardens under the control of the Aztec upper class. We know little about the use of cocoa beans in pre-Spanish times; and when Spanish chroniclers did indicate exact prices for individual cocoa beans, they automatically passed on Exhibit no. 8: Central America, cocoa beans 9 their own ideas of money to the Aztec means of payment. Actually these beans were mainly used to serve as a means of balancing in exchange deals. Wage earners such as porters and house employees also received cocoa beans in addition to their income paid in kind. Large quantities of cocoa beans played a part as tributes or as part of a politically motivated exchange of gifts. Exhibit no. 11: China, tea brick The Chinese Pu-erh tea is also known in Europe. This kind of tea bears this name from the plants which originally came from the town of Pu’er in the province of Yunnan. To trans- port the tea more easily it is pressed into bricks, which can be formed in different shapes: they look like balls, mushrooms or melons, are round like loaves of bread or flat like bricks.