Knowra Silk as currency Silk as currency The use of silk bolts and thread as money across medieval Eurasia, where standardized lengths of silk served as a store of value and medium of exchange.
Bolt of silk : A standard roll of silk cloth, roughly forty centimeters wide and twenty meters long, used as a counted monetary unit. The standardized bolt, not loose cloth, was the unit in which silk money was priced and paid.
Sogdian merchants : Central Asian traders from Sogdia who dominated Silk Road commerce and kept accounts in silk and silver. Their letters and contracts show silk changing hands as payment, not just as cargo.
Han dynasty silk stocks : The Han government's granaries and treasuries held silk in standardized bolts alongside grain as state reserves. Government stockpiles gave silk bolts the standardization and reliability a currency requires.
Paper money in China : The Jurchen Jin and Song dynasties issued government paper currency, the world's first widespread paper money. Silk-based credit instruments showed that cloth certificates could stand in for value, preparing the ground for paper.
Chinese copper coinage : Round copper-alloy coins with a square hole, China's standard small currency for over two thousand years. Copper was fine for small purchases; silk served where coins were too heavy or too scarce to move.
Commodity money : Money whose value comes from the market value of the material it is made of, such as salt, cattle, or cloth. Silk currency is a textbook case of commodity money, valuable everywhere because silk was wanted everywhere.
Tang dynasty silk taxation : The Tang fiscal system requiring taxes in silk cloth, making bolts of silk the state's accounting unit. When the state demanded taxes in silk, private contracts followed and silk became legal money.
Grain and silk taxation : The classical Chinese practice of collecting taxes in kind, chiefly grain and cloth, rather than in coin. Taxation in silk established official bolt measurements and made silk universally acceptable in payment.
Silk Road diplomacy : Chinese foreign policy of paying frontier nomads, notably the Turks, annual subsidies in silk to buy peace. Once silk was treasury wealth, the state paid its treaties in it, sending millions of bolts westward.
Grain as currency : The use of measured grain, especially millet and wheat, as a unit of account and payment in early China. Grain was heavy and perishable; silk matched grain's official role but traveled far better.
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