I'm always fascinated by this history of money, and wanted to show you all this little excerpt from an old book. I got the book from Anna's Archive (https://annas-archive.org/), a great place especially for older books.
So, the missionary, headed to the Congo, purchased cowrie shells, beads, salt, and brass wire, to be able to use as currency there. I wouldn't have thought that salt would be valuable enough, considering it's bulk. Also cowrie shells were on there way out, but when this occurred (1890) I guess they were still used. It reminds me of the section on the history of money in The Bitcoin Standard, by Saifadean Ammous.
Here's an excerpt from that book, on beads in West Africa:
Slowly but surely, Europeans were able to purchase a lot of the precious resources of Africa for the beads they acquired back home for very little.2 European incursion into Africa slowly turned beads from hard money to easy money, destroying their salability and causing the erosion of the purchasing power of these beads over time in the hands of the Africans who owned them, impoverishing them by transferring their wealth to the Europeans, who could acquire the beads easily. The aggry beads later came to be known as slave beads for the role they played in fueling the slave trade of Africans to Europeans and North Americans. A one‐time collapse in the value of a monetary medium is tragic, but at least it is over quickly and its holders can begin trading, saving, and calculating with a new one. But a slow drain of its monetary value over time will slowly transfer the wealth of its holders to those who can produce the medium at a low cost. This is a lesson worth remembering when we turn to the discussion of the soundness of government money in the later parts of the book.
FYI - I followed up on the book Presbyterian Pioneers in Congo because it was mentioned in the book King Leopold's Ghost (very interesting, all about the history of slavery and murder in the Congo, forcing the natives to harvest rubber). It's also a story of how this came about, and how it was gradually stopped, via a campaign by activists in the pre WWI era. Great read.
Have you read The Poisonwood Bible? It’s fiction, but the detail on daily life in the Congo is fascinating.
No, I haven't but it's on my list, thanks for the recommend. Sounds interesting.
I’d also recommend both 1491 and 1493, which are about pre and post colonial institutions, respectively.
I’ve always been fascinated by premodern economies and just daily life of historical societies.
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
The bead story in West Africa illustrates one of the most dangerous dynamics in monetary history. If you control the supply of the currency and can create it at low cost you can extract resources, labor and value from others without overt theft. The process is gradual, almost invisible, and often justified as legitimate trade. But structurally it functions like a leak in the economic hull.
This is why the parallel to government-issued fiat money is deliberate and worth thinking through. Inflation is the modern equivalent of Europeans manufacturing beads in bulk. Those closest to the money spigot acquire real goods and services first while everyone else pays later through reduced purchasing power. The historical examples strip away the technical jargon and show the human consequences over time impoverishment, dependency, and the steady erosion of autonomy.
Sound money is about more than financial theory. It is about whether value created by a society stays within it or is drained away by those with privileged access to the means of exchange....