The earliest use of metallic money in China, as in the Mediterranean world, dates back to c. 600 BCE. Although numismatic evidence abounds, contemporary documentary sources are virtually silent about money use, and historical writings from the Han dynasty have proven unreliable for tracing the origins of money. Fortunately, archaeological research has not only greatly enriched the numismatic record, but also yielded important new documentary sources. Legions of Chinese scholars—most notably Wu Liangbo, Chen Longwen, and above all Huang Xiquan—have done pioneering work in assembling and analyzing the wealth of new numismatic data. Two new books by Japanese scholars—building on a long tradition of outstanding Japanese scholarship on Chinese monetary history—offer fresh and insightful syntheses based on these new sources that greatly advance our understanding of the origins and development of the money economy in ancient China.
Emura Haruki's study provides us with the most comprehensive and authoritative survey and analysis of pre-Qin bronze coinage. As is well known, four distinct regions of monetary circulation emerged in the Warring States period: spade-shaped currencies in the Central Plain; knife-shaped currencies in the eastern states of Qi and Yan; round coins in Qin in the west; and a mix of currencies, including gold pieces, spade currencies, and bronze imitation cowries, in Chu in the south. The new evidence shows that by the late Warring States era, a greater variety of types appeared in all regions except Qin. Archaeological findings now make possible the typological classification and approximate dating of nearly two dozen types of currency. In addition, the inscriptions on these currencies supply key clues for determining who issued them. Perhaps the most striking feature of Emura's analysis is his hypothesis that bronze currencies were first issued not by rulers but rather by private agents for purposes of commercial exchange.
The new numismatic evidence reaffirms the standard view that the earliest bronze monies in China were the spade currencies issued in the states of the central and western Central Plain—Zhou, Jin, Zheng, Wey, and Song. Precise dating of these currencies remains elusive, but they are attested at archaeological sites beginning in the first half of the sixth century BCE. Emura suggests that the inscriptions on the earliest types were craftsmen's names or marks (clearly they did not designate states or places), and given their variation in size and weight, he proposes that merchants and artisans manufactured these currencies either on their own authority (in Wey perhaps) or on behalf of rulers (Zhou) or powerful political interests (the ministerial houses of Jin). Current opinion favors the idea that the earliest knife currencies (which appeared only slightly later than the spade currencies) originated with the semi-pastoral non-Han peoples (generically known as Di 狄) on the northern frontiers of Zhao and Yan, who cast them for the purposes of cross-border trade. This form of currency subsequently was adopted as the principal type of money by the Yan and Qi states, and it was also issued by some Zhao cities.
Expanding on his earlier work on urban and commercial development in ancient China, Emura argues that two distinctive patterns of economic development and monetary circulation emerged in the Warring States period.Footnote 1 In the thickly settled heartland of the Central Plain, government authority weakened after the division of Jin into the three independent states of Hann, Wei, and Zhao in 453 BCE. In this region, local cities and their merchant and artisan classes enjoyed considerable autonomy from their royal overlords. Private entrepreneurship stimulated industrial and commercial growth, and the commercialized cities of the Jin successor states issued a variety of currencies in their own names that circulated widely across state boundaries. In the peripheral states of Qin, Chu, Qi, and Yan, by contrast, autocratic rulers established bureaucratic institutions to mobilize economic resources. In these states, coinage and industrial production were concentrated in state-managed workshops and officials maintained much tighter regulation of trade. Currencies were highly uniform, and their circulation was largely confined within the state's borders (except for Chu gold pieces, which served as an international currency). Not surprisingly, Qin exercised the most rigorous control over monetary circulation: virtually no foreign currencies have been found in the Qin homeland, and Qin's distinctive round Banliang coins only slowly accompanied territorial expansion, even after the founding of the unified empire.
By the late Warring States period, multiple currency systems with subsidiary monies had developed in many states, with the notable exception of Qin. The most elaborate monetary system was found in Wei, at the crossroads of the main trade routes of the Central Plain. In addition to the numerous spade currencies issued by dozens of local cities, the Wei state created several special-purpose currencies—a thick, arch-shaped spade currency and a round coin with a round hole, both unusually high in copper content— that Emura believes were used for military expenditures. The arch-shaped currencies issued at the Wei capital of Daliang also were marked with their exchange value in gold, which became increasingly important in the monetary world of the third century BCE.
Emura's thesis on the salient place of private entrepreneurship in the economic life of the Jin successor states may not persuade all readers, but it is a powerful interpretation that provides the most coherent explanation for the proliferating diversity of coinage in the Warring States era. His study also demonstrates the great value of numismatic evidence for reconstructing trade patterns—including trade beyond the frontiers of the Zhou states—and for assessing the relationship between the state and the economy, a subject rarely touched upon in transmitted texts.
Kakinuma Yōhei's study of the monetary economy in ancient China down to the end of the Western Han is based on documentary rather than numismatic evidence, especially recently excavated texts such as the Qin administrative regulations included among the Shuihudi manuscripts and the legal statutes issued by the Han empire in 186 BCE and preserved in the Zhangjiashan manuscripts. Kakinuma, too, questions the assumption that early states in China exercised strong monetary sovereignty, but he argues from a different perspective. Drawing on the theoretical work on multiple currency systems by Kuroda Akinobu and research on the Han economy by his teacher Sahara Yasuo, Kakinuma asserts that gold and commodity monies like hemp cloth played important roles in exchange in ancient China.Footnote 2 Like Kuroda, Kakinuma stresses the asymmetry of monetary media in a multiple currency system: different monies serve distinct purposes and are not easily substituted for each other.
First of all, Kakinuma argues that the transition from a gift economy to a monetary economy commenced only with the issue of the first bronze currencies in the middle Spring and Autumn era. In a meticulous examination of the use of cowries in gift exchange and the ritual economy during the Shang and Western Zhou periods, he adds his voice to the recent consensus in Western scholarship that dismisses the long-standing belief that cowries served as the earliest form of money in China. In a chapter on the language of buying and selling in the pre-Qin era, Kakinuma suggests that the definitive displacement of ritual and gift exchange by impersonal commodity exchange through the market occurred only in the late Warring States era. Although he does not directly address Emura's thesis about the prevalence of privately issued currencies in the Jin successor states, Kakinuma contends that the acceptability of bronze currencies as money derived from their use in state payments, rather than their utility in commercial exchange. Nonetheless, during its short life the Qin empire failed to establish monetary unification.
A strong tension existed between the Qin-Han states, which sought to establish uniform nominal values for coins to facilitate revenue collection, and their subjects, who discriminated among coins based on their intrinsic metallic value. The state set prices for payments (including fines, a common judicial remedy) by statute and through periodic adjustments to market rates, but the values of gold and the heterogeneous bronze currencies in circulation before Emperor Wudi's monetary reforms fluctuated according to market conditions. Although the early Han state tolerated private minting of the Banliang coin it inherited from the Qin, it established strict standards for coinage and imposed draconian penalties for using substandard coins—with mixed results. Unification of coinage was achieved only after the creation of a state monopoly and the issue of the new Wuzhu coin under Emperor Wudi.
The most problematic aspect of Kakinuma's analysis, in my view, is his assertion that hemp cloth served as a “parallel monetary standard” (p. 290) during the Qin-Han era. In this respect, Kakinuma suggests, hemp cloth differed from gold and silk, which had more restricted uses (especially silk, which was commonly used in gifts but never as a means of payment). The Shuihudi market regulations did establish exacting standards for bolts of hemp cloth and a fixed exchange ratio between coin and cloth, but I dispute Kakinuma's reading that these rules also required merchants to accept payment in either coin or cloth. There is ample evidence that hemp cloth was used as a means of both public and private payments, but cloth certainly did not serve as a routine means of exchange in commodity trade. Since most households produced hemp cloth, Kakinuma infers that cloth constituted a “popularly supplied money” (minkan kyōkyūkei kahei 民間供給型貨幣) that complemented “state supplied” coin (pp. 301, 359). In other words, women working at home wove hemp cloth not only to provide for domestic clothing needs, but also to augment the household's supply of cash. Kakinuma argues that the salt and iron monopolies and the “equalized transport” (junshu 均輸) system of state commodity procurement enacted by Wudi intensified the need for ordinary households to generate this “popularly supplied” cloth money, but the evidence does not warrant such a conclusion.
Emura persuasively demonstrates that bronze currencies were issued for different purposes in the Warring States era: primarily for commercial exchange by local cities of the Central Plain, but for state payments and military procurement in the autocratic states of the periphery. The Qin unification, as Kakinuma shows, did not resolve this tension between the different purposes of money. Emura and Kakinuma both rightly emphasize the heterogeneity of money, not only in terms of regional variations in monetary circulation but also because of the different purposes each type of currency fulfilled. I am not convinced by Kakinuma's argument for the prominence of commodity monies such as cloth and grain, but his questioning of the conventional view that the monetary economy declined sharply after the Western Han deserves serious consideration. Although gold disappeared as a form of money and bronze coinage contracted in the Eastern Han, we should not underestimate the ability of the market to adapt to the diminished capacity of the state to issue currency.
