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  3. Origins of Money and of Banking What Is Money? It is

Origins of Money and of Banking What Is Money? It is

游客2024-02-27  10
问题                    Origins of Money and of Banking
    What Is Money?
    It is almost impossible to define money in terms of its physical form or properties since these are so diverse. Therefore any definition must be based on its functions.
    Money is anything that is widely used for making payments and accounting for debts and credits.
    Causes of the Development of Money
    One of the most important improvements over the simplest forms of early barter was the tendency to select one or two items in preference to others so that the preferred items became partly accepted because of their qualities in acting as media of exchange. Commodities were chosen as preferred barter items for a number of reasons--some because they were conveniently and easily stored, some because they had high value densities and were easily portable, and some because they were durable. These commodities, being widely desired, would be easy to exchange for others and therefore they came to be accepted as money.
    Many societies had laws requiring compensation in some form for crimes of violence, instead of the old Testament approach of "an eye for an eye". A similarly widespread custom was payment for brides in order to compensate the head of the family for the loss of a daughter’s services. Rulers have since very ancient times imposed taxes on or exacted (强求)tribute(贡物) from their subjects. Religious obligations might also entail payment of tribute or sacrifices of some kind. Thus in many societies there was a requirement for a means of payment for blood-money, bride-money, tax or tribute and this gave a great impetus(促进)to the spread of money.
    Objects originally accepted for one purpose were often found to be useful for other non-economic purposes and, because of their growing acceptability began to be used for general trading also, supplementing or replacing barter.
    Primitive Forms of Money
    The use of primitive forms of money in the Third World and North America is more recent and better documented than in Europe and its study sheds light on the probable origins of modern money. Among the topics treated are the use of wampum(贝壳)and the custom of the potlatch or competitive gift exchange in North America, disc-shaped stones in Yap, cowrie shells over much of Africa and Asia, cattle, manillas and whales teeth.
    In Fijian(斐济) society gifts of whales teeth were (and in certain cases still are) a significant feature of certain ceremonies. One of their uses was as bride-money, with a symbolic meaning similar to that of the engagement ring in Western society. Whales teeth were "tambua" (from which our word "taboo" comes) meaning that they had religious significance, as did the fei stones of Yap which were still being used as money as recently as the mid 1960s.
The Invention of Banking and Coinage
    The invention of banking preceded (先于)that of coinage. Banking originated in Ancient Mesopotamia where the royal palaces and temples provided secure places for the safe-keeping of grain and other commodities. Receipts came to be used for transfers not only to the original depositors but also to third parties. Eventually private houses in Mesopotamia also got involved in these banking operations and laws regulating them were included in the code of Hammurabi.
    In Egypt too the centralization of harvests in state warehouses also led to the development of a system of banking. Written orders for the withdrawal of separate lots of grain by owners whose crops had been deposited there for safety and convenience, or which had been compulsorily deposited to the credit of the king, soon became used as a more general method of payment of debts to other persons including tax gatherers, ]priests and traders. Even after the introduction of coinage these Egyptian grain banks served to reduce the need for precious metals which tended to be reserved for foreign purchases, particularly in connection with military activities.
    Precious metals, in weighed quantities, were a common form of money in ancient times. The transition to quantities that could be counted rather than weighed came gradually.
    Many primitive forms of money were counted just like coins. Cowrie shells, obtained from some islands in the Indian Ocean, were a very widely used primitive form of money--in fact they were still in use in some parts of the world (such as Nigeria) within living memory. Thus it is not surprising that among the earliest countable metallic money or "coins" were "cowries" made of bronze or copper, in China.
    Money Exchange and Credit Transfer
    The great variety of coinages originally in use in the Hellenic (古希腊的)world meant that money changing was the earliest and most common form of Greek banking. Usually the money changers would carry out’ their business in or around temples and other public buildings, setting up their trapezium-shaped tables (which usually carried a series of lines and squares for assisting calculations), from which the Greek bankers, the trapezitai derived their name, much as our name for bank comes from the Italian banca for bench or counter. The close association between banking, money changing and temples is best known to us from the episode of Christ’s overturning the tables in the Temple of Jerusalem ( Matthew 21.12 ).
    Money changing was not the only form of banking. One of the most important services was bottomry (船舶抵押契约)or lending to finance the carriage of freight by ships. Other business enterprises supported by the Greek bankers included mining and construction of public buildings. The most famous and richest of all was Pasion who started his banking career in 394 BC as a slave in the service of two leading Athenian bankers and rose to eclipse (超越)his masters, gaining in the process not only his freedom but also Athenian citizenship. In addition to his banking business he owned the largest shield factory in Greece and also conducted a hiring business lending domestic articles such as clothes, blankets, silver bowls etc. for a lucrative fee.
    Paper Money
    In China the issue of paper money became common from about AD 960 onwards but there had been occasional issues long before that. A motive for one such early issue, in the reign of Emperor Hien Tsung 806-821, was a shortage of copper for making coins. A drain of currency from China, partly to buy off potential invaders from the north, led to greater reliance on paper money with the result that by 1020 the quantity issued was excessive, causing inflation. In subsequent centuries there were several episodes of hyperinflation (恶性通货膨胀) and after about 1455, after well over 500 years of using paper money, China abandoned it.
    Gold Standard
    For centuries earlier silver had been the standard of value. The pound was originally an amount of silver weighing a pound. France and the United States were in favour of a bimetallic(金属的)standard and in 1867 an international conference was held in Paris to try and widen the area of common currencies based on coins with standard weights of gold and silver. However when the various German states merged into a single country in 1871 they chose the gold standard. The Scandinavian countries adopted the gold standard shortly afterwards. France made the switch from bimetallism to gold in 1878 and Japan, which bad been on a silver standard, changed in 1897. Finally, in 1900, the United States officially adopted the gold standard. [br] Pasion, a slave worked for two leading Athenian bands, later opened a bank of his own.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案 B
解析 见Money Exchange and Credit Transfer中的第二段。
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