Re: Putting Chartalism In Its Place?

["Barkley Rosser" <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Hi, Mat, :-),
     Actually Mat and I debated this,
including the example of cowrie
shells on this list several years ago.
Yes, indeed, cowries were used to
pay taxes in certain West African
kingdoms for a period of time.  These
were also the states that accepted
cowries in payment for slaves, giving
the lovely cowries the title of _The
Shell Money of the Slave Trade_,
Jan Hagedorn and Marion Johnson,
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
     Excellent summaries and discussions
of various kinds of "primitive" commodity
monies can be found in Paul Einzig, _Primitive
Money_, 1949, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode,
and Hingston Quiggen, _A Survey of Primitive
Money_, 1949 [a big year for this sort of thing],
London: Methuen.  Both of these books do
mention cases where such monies were accepted
by states for payment of taxes, e.g. coonskins in
certain American colonies during British rule.
     Here is what Marina and I had to say about
cowries in the first edition of our _Comparative
Economics in a Transforming World Economy_,
1996, Irwin [second edition, in press, MIT Press],
p. 96:

    "Cowrie shells (Cypraea moneta) were used by groups
ranging from West Africa to Hawaii and even to some North
American Indian tribes [Hagedorn and Johnson].  These
small but very hard shells come from the Maldive Islands
in the Indian Ocean and were originally used as fertility
talismans, being thought to resemble female sexual organs.
Their use as money dates from the eighth century, B.C., in
China and India.  They originally entered West Africa carried
across the Sahara to Timbuktu by Muslim traders around the
800s, and were thoroughly entrenched as money by the 1200s.
They were brought by ship by the Portuguese after the 1400s
to purchase slaves.  The slave-trading kings of Dahomey
controlled their importation, an early form of monetary policy,
and distributed them in annual festivals."

     I believe that it was only in West Africa that they achieved
any recognition or clear use by organized governments, although
this may have also happened in parts of India and China as
well for periods.  They were still in unofficial use as
media of exchange in parts of  India and East Africa in the late
1800s.  This use was actively suppressed by the British colonial
authorities who wished to substitute the British pound, which
eventually happened.  Today, cowries are strictly jewelry,
although I have seen quite a lot of use of them for that.  They
seem to have experienced a revival of popularity recently,
especially for neck chokers and bracelets, strings of them.
I presume that a major source  of their popularity is their
appearance that  originally led to their use as "fertility talismans."
      It can certainly be argued that they were more fully "money"
when they were recognized as such in various capacities by
states, as happened in West Africa, even if these states lacked
some of the attributes of modern, bureaucratic entities.
Barkley Rosser

----- Original Message -----
From: "Forstater, Mathew" <ForstaterM@xxxxxxxx>
To: <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>; "William F Hummel" <wfhummel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 3:41 PM
Subject: RE: Putting Chartalism In Its Place?


Barkley -

To address just one example, cowrie shells.

Up until now I either didn't think of cowries as "money," or not in the
modern sense.  But I stumbled onto some interesting stuff.

Paul E. Lovejoy, in his article on "Interregional Monetary Flows in the
Precolonial trade of Nigeria" writes:

"Dependencies of such emirates as Nupe paid their levies in cowries as
well, so that the taxation system effectively assured that people
participated in the market economy and used the currency, a policy
remarkably similar to the one which the later colonial regimes pursued
in their efforts to see their own currencies accepted." (1974, p. 581)

Robin Law, in "Slaves, Trade, and the Material Basis of Political Power
in Precolonial West Africa" concurs:

"The apparent preference to the payment of taxes in money-cowries or
gold-is especially interesting.  It must be assumed that the spread of
the use of cowry shells as money in West Africa depended upon state
initiative-this was certainly the case with the introduction of the
cowry currency in Bornu in the 1840s." (1978, p. 49)

What about the fact that monopoly issue, then?  If anyone can gather
cowries, it would mean that the state had no monopoly, no?

In the same article and again in THE OYO EMPIRE, c. 1600-1836, Law
informs us that "it appears that the issue of *strung* cowries was a
monopoly of the palace" (1978, p. 49).  This refers to strings of
specific numbers of cowries, and specific numbers of strings collected
in a "head." (1977, p. 209).  Also, the areas that used cowries were
often areas where they were not available-far into the mainland, and
even areas where cowries were not available even in the sea.


Lovejoy, Paul E., 1974, "Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial
Trade of Nigeria," Journal of African History, Volume XV, No. 4, pp.
563-585.


Law, Robin, 1978, "Slaves, Trade, and Taxes: The Material Basis of
Political Power in Precolonial West Africa," Research in Economic
Anthropology, Volume 1, pp. 37-52.


Law, Robin, 1977, The Oyo Empire, c. 1600-c. 1836: A West African
Imperialism in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Oxford: Clarendon
Press.

I am not saying that this means that all examples are like this. But it
is possible that many more are than we thought. It is important to
remember that the term "state money" is a little misleading. The issuing
authority does not have to be a "state."  It could be a church, palace,
actually any political authority.  The only requirements are the power
to impose obligations of some kind, whether called 'tax' or anything
else, and the power to name that which will settle the obligation.  As
Lerner says in his entry on "Money" in Encyclopedia Britannica, 1946:

"Any particular seller will accept as money what he can use for buying
things himself or for settling his own obligations.  This seems to say
that a means of payment will be generally acceptable if it is already
generally acceptable, and it looks like a circular argument.  But it
only means that general acceptability is not easily established.
General acceptability may come about gradually.  If a growing number of
people are willing to accept payment in a particular form, this makes
others willing to accept that kind of payment.  General acceptability
may be established rapidly if very important sellers or creditors are
willing to accept payment in a particular form of money.  For example if
the government announces its readiness to accept a certain means of
payment in settlement of taxes, taxpayers will be willing to accept this
means of payment because they can use it to pay taxes.  Everyone else
will then be willing to accept it because they can use it to buy things
from the taxpayers, or to pay debts to them, or to make payments to
others who have to make payments to the taxpayers, and so on."  (p. 693)

best,

Mat