[HN Gopher] Silver coin boom in medieval England due to melted d...
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Silver coin boom in medieval England due to melted down Byzantine
treasures
Author : zeristor
Score : 52 points
Date : 2024-04-09 01:08 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| gunshai wrote:
| If you look closely in the first image you can tell that some of
| those coins are "clipped" then the coin with ridges is not
| clipped.
|
| The ridges are to mitigate "clipping" which is the process of
| removing JUUUUUST enough metal from the coin as to not raise
| suspicion and people trade with them, but not enough to raise
| suspicion and get ... well killed by the Monarchy.
|
| Learning about the history of money and how it completely shaped
| the world is pretty fascinating. There is a guy at University of
| Arizona who has a course on Youtube that covers this subject,
| HIGHLY recommend.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Learning about the history of money and how it completely
| shaped the world is pretty fascinating.
|
| The first chapter of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations also covers
| some of this. Specifically I remember the clipping topic, and
| then landlords weighing payments to protect themselves from
| clipping.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Weighing coins was always the preferred way of counting
| money. The pound sterling is called the pound sterling
| because 240 mediaeval pennies minted from sterling silver
| weighed one pound.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| And some modern coins are designed so that bags of mixed
| coins can be counted by weight. For instance, all US
| cupronickel clad coins (dime, quarter, Kennedy half-dollar
| and Eisenhower dollar) have the same ratio of weight to
| value, such that a pound of any combination of them is
| worth $20.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This is sort of interesting as historical trivia, but at
| what point would it become convenient or useful? You'd
| need to sort your coins before weighing them, and it
| seems like if you were partly sorting your coins you may
| as well totally sort them.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| Since the coins have the same ratio of value to weight,
| you don't need to sort them before weighing them. Still
| pointless though!
| jeffbee wrote:
| You would, because you have to get rid of all the
| pennies, nickels, and oddball dollar coins.
| Arrath wrote:
| I had no idea. That's actually really neat!
| xandrius wrote:
| Got a way for us to find that course?
| Luc wrote:
| Professor Barth probably: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li
| st=PLinliDgP9EbScxfH5wxoX...
| dumpHero2 wrote:
| Gemini has been pretty helpful with search lately:
| https://g.co/gemini/share/2d4a0a1f497f
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Not all clipping was illegal, or even nefarious. It was only a
| crime where there was a solid national currency system, which
| was far from universal. Many people would be trading in a
| variety of currencies, none of which was specifically backed by
| any laws forbidding clipping. Clipping would become so common
| that anyone with _good_ coins was a fool not to clip them down
| to the local norm. There was also a general lack of small
| change in the ancient world. Heavily clipped coins, or even
| their clippings, likely substituted for the lack of smaller
| denominations. If a coin is worth its weight in silver, silver
| must be worth its weight in coins, clippings or not.
| skybrian wrote:
| The Roman empire was built on plunder and after converting to
| Christianity, the old pagan temples got plundered too. Precious
| metals get recycled. Interesting that they were able to trace how
| it happened.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Which empires were not built on plunder?
| WalterBright wrote:
| The US, for one.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Well, about that....
|
| The US was certainly built on plunder, perhaps not of the
| shiny metals kind but plunder nonetheless.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The US was certainly built on plunder
|
| Selling iron ore and other raw material to other
| countries? I don't think so.
|
| Don't neglect all the goods and services created by an
| industrial economy. You can't dig a house out of the
| ground, nor shoes, nor canned goods, nor glass bottles,
| nor choo choo trains, nor airplanes, nor textiles, etc.
|
| Japan and Hong Kong both proved beyond a shadow of a
| doubt that great wealth does not come from plunder, it
| comes from creating things.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| The native Americans might disagree slightly on that one.
| Perhaps the transatlantic slave trade might also be
| considered plunder?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The native Americans might disagree slightly on that
| one.
|
| The evidence in the bones of pre-Columbian Indians is
| that the suffered periodic famines.
|
| > Perhaps the transatlantic slave trade might also be
| considered plunder?
|
| It could be. But it's also true that whatever wealth the
| slaves created was burned to the ground in the Civil War.
| The industrialized free Northern states' economy buried
| the economy of the slave South.
|
| There's also the wealth of the rest of N and S American
| countries, which did not become wealthy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But it's also true that whatever wealth the slaves
| created was burned to the ground in the Civil War.
|
| No, its not.
|
| For one thing, the states that joined the Confederacy
| weren't the only states in which wealth was built by
| slaves. They were _most_ of the states that were _still_
| slave states at the time, but many more states _had been_
| slave states, and some still were and stayed in the
| Union.
|
| For another thing, while war was destructive, not all the
| wealth built on slavery _in the Confederacy_ was
| destroyed in the Civil War.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Slavery died out in the Northern states around 1800. The
| industrialization in the North came after that.
|
| > not all the wealth built on slavery in the Confederacy
| was destroyed in the Civil War
|
| What wasn't was a rounding error. Of course, the slave
| states didn't have much in the way of industry to be
| destroyed in the first place. The plantations were burned
| down by Sherman.
|
| The slave South couldn't even make shoes. The reason Lee
| was at Gettysburg was he was headed for nearby Harrisburg
| to loot the shoe factory there. Rebel soldiers were
| largely barefoot.
|
| History shows that free people outproduce slaves by a
| wide margin. Running an industrial slave economy has been
| tried a few times, with dismal results.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Yes, they just were lucky enough to find some fertile and
| totally uninhabited land .
| WalterBright wrote:
| Did they find factories, along with skilled labor to run
| them, too?
| darby_eight wrote:
| ??? american natural resources alone funded centuries of
| economic growth.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The growth came from American industry.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Why weren't the Indians wealthy? Or Central America, or
| South America?
| hospadar wrote:
| Weren't they? Europeans certainly placed a high value on
| the land and resources controlled by native americans and
| went to extreme lengths (i.e. genocide and mass
| displacement) to get their hands on it.
|
| If that's not plunder I don't know what is.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Why didn't the other American nations get wealthy?
| Central America, South America, the Caribbean, etc.?
| INTPenis wrote:
| You're kidding right?
|
| I mean let's ignore the plunder of a fully inhabited
| continent since it was done long before the US existed. And
| of course let's ignore Hawaii.
|
| Who owns the Panama canal? It's not even on US soil.
|
| Who owns a huge chunk of Cuba?
|
| Guam, Puerto Rico, Philippines?
|
| And let's not forget my favorite piece of American
| history/plunder, the black hills of Dakota.
|
| Study your history.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Who owns the Panama canal?
|
| The Government of Panama.
|
| > It's not even on US soil.
|
| Well, no, its on Panamanian soil.
|
| > Study your history.
|
| Take your own advice. Particular dates of interest you
| might want to focus on are 7 September 1977 and 31
| December 1999, when it comes to the Panama Canal.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Yes, they did hand it back in 1977. How big of them.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The US funded the construction of the Panama Canal, along
| with providing the heavy equipment to do it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| As well as funding the revolt that created Panama out of
| part of Colombia in the first place, for the purpose of
| building the canal.
|
| The history is definitely one of imperialism, but the
| claim that it was currently American was 25 years out of
| date.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Remember the US was formed out of a revolt, too.
| Revolutions are not always bad.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| They actually handed it back December 31, 1999.
|
| The treaty providing for that to happen was signed in
| 1977.
|
| Should, again, have followed your own "study your
| history" recommendation.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Do you really think the US became a superpower because of
| the black hills of Dakota?
|
| > the plunder of a fully inhabited continent since it was
| done long before the US existed
|
| Did the US plunder a continent full of factories and
| businesses and highways and steel mills and airplanes and
| farms and computers and ships and ... ?
|
| Living on land that has natural resources does not
| automatically make one rich. Millennia of history and
| pre-history makes that clear.
| diydsp wrote:
| Try searching for the word "gold" in this document...
|
| https://amauta.info/files/columbus%20journal2.pdf
| WalterBright wrote:
| Columbus predated the US by 300 years.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| It reminds me a little of how Europe (Spain, particularly)
| extracted enormous amounts of silver from South America and
| shipped it to China to trade for goods[1].
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_silver_trade_from_the_1...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| China was not interested in European goods and only wanted to
| get paid in 'hard currency' for its own goods and commodities
| (China, silk, tea, etc).
|
| The Spanish went with it but the English did not want to and
| decided to find something the Chinese would want. And they
| found opium, which they could conveniently produce in their
| Asia colonies. They also started producing tea in their own
| colonies to avoid having to buy it from China (this is the
| reason why India produces tea and Indians drink chai).
| Kbelicius wrote:
| > this is the reason why India produces tea and Indians drink
| chai
|
| Chai is just tea or is it not in India?
| gibolt wrote:
| Cha is tea in Chinese. I assume this is Indian naming is
| mentioned as a carryover from Chinese.
| porphyra wrote:
| Northern Chinese (Mandarin, etc) call it Cha which became
| chai etc.
|
| Southern Chinese (Min Nan, etc) call it Teh which became
| tea etc.
|
| You can see that coastal nations got their tea from the
| seafaring southern regions whereas much of Central Asia,
| North Africa, and Eastern Europe got it from the
| northerners via the Silk Road.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/etymologymaps/comments/g4bmh3/ch
| ai_...
| duskwuff wrote:
| They're the same thing (besides how they're customarily
| served). What the parent is getting at is the linguistic
| aspect: most cultures which imported tea by land over the
| Silk Road, like India and Turkey, call it something that
| sounds like "cha". Cultures which imported it by sea, like
| most of Europe, call it something that sounds like "te".
| pjmlp wrote:
| We imported it by sea (Portugal), and call it Cha.
| dasv wrote:
| Yes, but Portugal had colonies in India!
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Tea wasn't a common beverage throughout India before the
| British. It was known but mostly used as medicinal plant.
|
| Commercial growing was initiated by the British.
|
| The point I was making is that Indians drink tea, and
| have a tea industry, because of the British.
| numbers wrote:
| You might be interested in this:
| https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-
| land...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In India this is sweetened tea with milk.
|
| The point is that Indians did not reallu drink tea before
| the British.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > China was not interested in European goods
|
| The Chinese government wasn't interested, a lot of people in
| China were and were willing to trade with Europeans they just
| weren't allowed to do that freely. Of course, this is
| probably more relevant to the 1800s (and I'm not talking only
| about opium, it was just easier to transport/smuggle).
| WalterBright wrote:
| Ironically, Spain failed to become wealthy from importing all
| that gold and silver. What they got was inflation instead.
|
| It's the same reason we have inflation today. It's just that
| instead of looting gold from other places, the Fed just prints
| the "gold" and pretends to not know what causes inflation.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Well, I dont think the Fed "pretends not to know what causes
| inflation"... Everyone knows what causes inflation, its right
| there in the name
| kibwen wrote:
| Evidently not, because otherwise people would realize by
| now that inflation has causes beyond simply an increase in
| M1. Banks lend more money? Inflation. Economy-wide supply
| shocks? Inflation. Population decrease? Inflation. Money
| has a market value, and it drifts with supply and demand.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Compare the increase in the money supply with the
| inflation rate. There's about a 13 month lag.
|
| > Banks lend more money? Inflation.
|
| People paying back loans? Deflation. It cancels out.
| Except the Fed loans out money and does not pay it back -
| inflation.
|
| > Economy-wide supply shocks? Inflation.
|
| Where does the extra money come from? And what about when
| the shocks end, why doesn't the price come back down?
|
| > Population decrease? Inflation.
|
| Reduction in demand means deflation.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| The stack of derivatives is too big to fail
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > "There wasn't a Bank of England at this stage - if you want
| some coins, you make some coins. You just need to be someone
| who's got the wealth to do it."
|
| Seems like something the cryptocurrency advocates could learn
| from.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Coins were just pre-weighted pieces of silver though
| zeristor wrote:
| Cambridge University have a little YouTube video which goes into
| more depth:
|
| The Silver Standard: Solving a medieval money mystery
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joOPPTdF06Y
| jl6 wrote:
| I wonder how widely the isotopic signature method could be
| applied. Precious metals don't tend to ever get thrown away.
| Could we trace the flow of all gold and silver throughout
| history? Could we tell the difference between "clean" gold and
| gold that has been melted down from nazi loot or the Jules Rimet
| trophy?
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