Text 2. From shells to mobile phones

It is considered odd to take too much of an interest in money—in the actual coins and notes, that is, rather than the accumulation of a hefty bank balance, though that is frowned upon too. But you do not have to be a coin-collector or a miser to enjoy the British Museum’s newly refurbished money gallery. Outwardly a display about the evolution of money, from cowrie shells to mobile phones, it is a treasure trove of fascinating stories from a wide range of cultures and time periods.

Money is a particularly good window on the past, says Ben Alsop, the gallery’s curator, because it is so universal. “We’re lucky, with this gallery, in the sense that money, going back 4,000 years, covers the whole of the world and the whole of history,” he says. His gallery can use its collection to talk about world history in a way that other departments of the museum, which focus on a particular period or part of the world, cannot. Moreover, visitors are already familiar with the subject matter. “People know what money means to them, and therefore what it may have meant to people in the past as well,” says Mr Alsop.

The gallery exploits this familiarity to challenge the way we think about money. There is the standard history, as you would expect. It starts with cowrie shells, stone axes and jade; moves on to the earliest coins from Lydia, now part of Turkey, from around 650 BC, and the “spade money” and “knife money” from China from around the same time; continues with the emergence of paper money in China; and culminates with the switch to payment cards and mobile money in the modern era. But interwoven with this chronological display are countless examples of the unexpected cultural, political and religious uses of money. Throughout history it has always been more than just a medium of economic exchange.

Money is arguably an early communications medium. Indeed, since money is passed from one person to another, you could even argue that it’s an example of social media. For centuries only gods or dead ancestors appeared on coins, but eventually rulers (in the Roman case, starting with Julius Caesar) realised they could be used to project images of themselves. Augustus looks young and dashing on his coins, whereas a series of coins of Nero emphasise his humanity, as he ages and gets fatter. But you do not need to be an emperor to send messages using money. The gallery includes a Roman coin from 215AD, on which the Christian “chi-rho” symbol has been scratched behind the emperor’s head; a French coin from 1855 overstamped with an advertisement for Pears Soap; and a 1903 British penny on which Edward VII’s face has been stamped with “Votes for women” by suffragettes.

Piggybacking messages on coins in this way is just one of many recurring themes in the history of money. Another is forgery: one display case shows forged Roman coins alongside modern forgeries of British pound coins, which you are invited to compare to those in your pocket. “Pieces of eight” anticipated the American dollar as a global currency. And paper money has always been accompanied by concerns that it will fuel inflation. The highest-denomination banknote ever issued, it turns out, comes not from Zimbabwe, as you might expect, but from post-war Hungary, where notes were issued in 1946 worth 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (100 quintillion) pengo. Nearby you can see a poster printed on Zimbabwean banknotes advertising the Zimbabwean, a newspaper, with the slogan “It’s cheaper to print this on money than paper”. At the time, it was.

Just as astonishing is the Swedish “riksdaler” plate money from the 17th century, which took the form of giant copper slabs weighing 14kg. Sweden’s abundant copper meant the metal was cheap, and a lot of it was needed to give a coin sufficient value to compete with silver. But the resulting slabs were so unwieldy—this is money that could be used as a murder weapon—that Sweden eventually had to issue paper notes, the first of their kind in Europe. Other oddities on display include the unused prototypes for euro coins devised by Britain’s royal mint; £10 notes printed for use in an episode of “Doctor Who”, depicting the doctor himself; and underwear with built-in pockets to keep money safe in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake that struck in 2010.

Mobile money was introduced in Haiti to distribute aid funds and make up for the lack of functioning financial infrastructure. But locals are wary of a virtual currency they cannot touch, and uptake has been slow. Mobile money is doing well in sub-Saharan Africa, notably in Kenya, which leads the world in its adoption. In the developed world, however, the use of mobile phones to make payments has run into a different problem: the existing payments infrastructure works well enough that people see little reason to switch from cash and cards. Accordingly, it is premature to suggest that the use of physical tokens for money is, after 4,000 years, about to come to an end. But mobile money highlights yet another way to look at money: as a technology for transferring value. Coins have just two faces but money, this fascinating gallery reminds us, has always had many.

(the source: adapted from www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/09/british-museums-new-money-gallery?fsrc=nlw|newe|9-24-2012|3564640|37805525| )

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