A Really General Introduction

My Christmas Report on Primitive Money

Anthony Sealy

March 2002

A Really General Introduction

Being that this is the first of this sort of thing that I have

done, I'll admit to being a little unsure of how exactly to go

about it. As a student, my primary aim has always been to write an

essay, to make a specific and hopefully original point in my

writing. Given, however, that my present occupation is as a RA,

and not as a student, I suspect that I ought to be going about what

I am doing in a somewhat different manner. The beginnings of what

I have done are similar; I have gone to the library, found a number

of books and articles relevant to the topic of discussion, and done

as much reading as I suspect is useful, and then gone back and done

it twice more. However my presentation of what I have found will

be rather different. What I am going to try to do is not to present some point in particular, but instead to present a wholistic survey of what I have found, including both what I believe to be useful, and that which is less useful. I have, of course, focussed my energies upon what I believe to be most useful, and will present that material in greater detail, but what I want to do is present a general report to you so that you can decide what is of the most significance, and where you (or I if you believe that what I have done is still insufficient for you to

continue with what I have began) can further the study if you believe it will be fruitful. I will make some preliminary comments about what I think regarding the material, but this will be of secondary importance. My primary aim will be to tell you what I have found, and let you use your much more able cerebral abilities to figure out the significance. Of every piece of writing mentioned, I have either the article photocopied or the book on loan until the end of April, at your disposal.

Most generally, I have focussed my study upon the concept of

'primitive money'. The exact meaning of this term is somewhat

unclear, at least to me, since exactly what makes primitive money

'primitive' seems at the outset to beg the question. If primitive

money is indeed money, why is it primitive, and not just money?

What I believe to be a wholly unsatisfactory answer is that

primitive money is any sort of money that was 'introduced' prior to

the advent of coinage. Why coined currency is in any relevant

sense more advanced that other sorts of currency is a question to

which I have no answer, but I am busy thinking again, and I

promised in the preceding paragraph not to. At any rate, I am

hopeful that this will serve us as useful, if not altogether

satisfactory, definition of the concept of primitive money.

More specifically, I have been interested in the idea of

'fiat' primitive money. Coined currency, for the most part in

human history, has been commodity money, the value of the coin

being the use value of the metal in the coin, with the function of

coinage being merely to provide a standardized measure of the

metal. There have, however, been some instances of 'token'

coinage, the most famous being Chinese knife money; but in all of

these cases, they have been issued by largish governments (China,

Macedonia, Persia and Greece), so I am more than sure it can be

demonstrated that your hypothesis is correct, that they were

accepted for payment of taxes. Modern paper money is, of course,

fiat money also, and it too is also accepted for purposes of

taxation. Your question, as I take it, is whether there has every

been any sort of 'fiat', i.e. some non-commodity primitive money

that has not been accepted for payment of taxes.

Something that I want to draw attention to at the outset is to

some general trends in the anthropological literature that I have

surveyed. One in particular may be of particular interest to you,

and if not, then at least of sufficiently noteworthiness that I

think you should at least have a think about, that being the

'Polanyi school' of economic anthropology. The general idea goes

something like this. When approaching primitive economies and

monetary systems, economists generally tend to try to take the

typical modern economic structure and impose that upon these

primitive communities without paying enough attention to how the

structure of these communities differ from ours. They view

primitive communities through the eyes of Western culture, without

trying to understand how the primitive communities see themselves,

and thus fail to grasp the essence of what is actually going on in

these communities. They merely assume that primitive economies are

smaller versions of our Western economies, and thus fail to

understand significant differences between the two economic

structures. They might, for example, argue that your theory

regarding taxation suffers from a Westernized perspective, because

you fail to understand that many of these cultures do not have what

is analogous to our system of taxation.

For a more detailed account see, George Dalton, 'Primitive Money',

in American Anthropologist (Feb 1965). Dalton was a student of

Polanyi at Columbia.

Right, right, a bunch of post-modern gibberish, but how is

this particularly relevant to your thesis? Well, anthropologists

of this variety (and they are numerous) assert that most forms of

primitive money are not actually money in our Western sense. Goods

in a Western society are demarcated in specific values of our

currency; a can of corn costs 99 cents, a pair of Nike Jordan Airs

costs $199.99. But goods in primitive societies are not demarcated

in the same way. Each good on the island of Yap does not have some

particular equivalent in Yapese stone money. Western money is

'general purpose' money; it functions as a means of exchange, a

mode of payment, and a standard of value. Primitive money is

'special-purpose' money; it serves only one or two of these

functions, but never the third. Hence assuming that primitive

monetary systems function in the same way as our Western system

fails to appreciate this basic distinction.

Economics textbooks (e.g. Samuelson and Reynolds) err in

citing primitive monies indiscriminately as equivalents

of Western media of (commercial) exchange [...]. By

giving the impression that all primitive monies perform

the same primary function as dollars, they quite wrongly

imply that all primitive economies may be regarded as

crude market systems. (Dalton, 60)

Not everything on the island of Yap can be bought with Yapese stone

money. They are used for specific social purposes each with particular

social significance, and are not used to buy corn or shoes.

A result of the popularity of this critique is that

anthropology appears to have become a hotbed of Marxism. I will

admit that I am about to be a little more liberal than perhaps I

ought to be with my summarizing here, but it this seems to be the

general point of the Marxists : the money of primitive communities

often serves a special function that Western money does not serve;

it is a good itself with intrinsic prestige value. Primitive

communities are replete with conspicuous displays of wealth.

What I Think

The first difficulty I encountered was to figure out exactly

what constituted non-commodity primitive money. The textbook you

provided me offered some clues, offering for examples both shell

money in general and the stone currency of Yap. I went about

researching this in earnest for quite some time until it struck me,

rather recently, that the whole idea is little bit absurd. It

seems to me that ALL primitive money, at some time or another, must

have been commodity money. It must have been useful for some thing

at some time.

However, it is clear that at some time, the value of the money

began to exceed its use value, i.e. its value as a commodity. What

began as being valued as an ornament began to be generally

exchanged as an ornament, then became valuable because it could be

exchanged and then began to be stored because it could be

exchanged; the use value of ornamentation sometimes disappeared,

but the exchange value, and hence the prestige value of owning the

particular hunk of stone or polished shell remained.

How does your 'taxation' thesis pan out? Incredibly poorly,

to tell the truth. In almost all cases, taxes have been collected

in kind; sometimes fixed as some particular local staple (some of

which have included copra (the dried flesh of coconuts), gold dust,

mulberries, oxen and cows, livestock, pepper, skins and cloth,

textiles, grains, and sugar), but as likely just as some sort of

hodgepodge of goods that had to be turned in. I do not have a good

thesis why there should be apparently NO coincidence between the

collection of taxes and the existence of primitive fiat money, but

it appears that this is the case.

One thing, however, did become apparent as I did my research,

and my clever little Political Scientifically trained brain

instantly (more or less) recognized the equivalence between

taxation and collected social or political fines. As I have and

you shall discover, almost every form of primitive fiat money that

I investigate could be used as some sort of politically recognized

sanctioned means of social redemption, be it for the payment of

blood money, fines for adultery, theft, etc. It is also used

extensively, if not universally, as a means of bride payment,

although this is not nearly as related. Regardless, I claim to

have found the underpinning that you were looking for, and most

extensively at that. Where I have not found it, I remain convinced

that I could. Every time I made a sufficiently determined effort,

I was rewarded with sufficiently detailed material to support the

hypothesis.

I also think that the additional function of money described

by the Marxists, money as a prestige instrument, is particularly

interesting, and probably quite easily defendable. Another point

to make : most of this money takes considerable effort to produce

or acquire. Hence smaller amounts become relatively more valuable,

thus not necessitating a very small supply. Some things I noted

mentally, but not always physically.

The only problem I can see with your hypothesis is that I

think you need to establish the direction of causation. I'm now

certain that we can demonstrate (have demonstrated) correlation,

but is that enough? Isn't the counter-claim simply going to be

that these forms of primitive money were accepted as payment for

fines, blood-money, etc. because they were money (i.e. valuable),

and not that they were money (i.e. valuable) because they were

accepted as payment for fines, blood-money, etc? Sure, you've got

a model that explains why you think this is the case, but I still

sort of see it as problematic.

At any rate, your problem, not mine. I'm just finding the

facts. You have to do the thinking, Herr professor.

Something to Consider

This warning should, however, be noted. The frequent

statements that shells, rings, teeth, mats and feathers

were used as money in Oceania, and their inclusion in

currency collections, are explained by the fact that

after the coming of whites, traders and natives adapted

the articles used in gift-exchange, in payment for

services rendered, in marriage-payments and in fines, for

secular and commercial transactions ; these articles

cannot properly be called 'primitive money', though their

use illustrates a stage in the history of its

development. (Quiggin 119)

Primary Evidence

Paul Einzig, Primitive Money (1949).

A phenomenally useful book, unfortunately one of the last I

found. I suspect that a thorough reading would make me quite an

authority on the subject, and further suspect that a number of

authors of other pieces I will discuss should have taken the time.

This book, written by an anthropologist, attempts to document every

existence type of primitive money known. It breaks the topic down

into ethnological, historical, and theoretical sections. The

ethnological section is subdivided into continents, and includes in

the lists of primitive currencies the following :

mats, teeth and tusks, rats, stones (from Yap), beads,

pigs, feathers, shells, yams, rice, drums, bronze, bees

wax, buffaloes, cattle, cauldrons, axes, jars, tin, gold

dust, silver, lead, tea, coconuts, grain, reindeer,

tamarind seeds, camels, iron, salt, calico (cotton

cloth), slaves, brass, fur, alcohol, wampum, cocoa,

maize, arrows and guns.

From this we will make a primary list of the apparently fiat

currencies : teeth and tusks, stones, beads, feathers, and shells.

At the outset it is interesting to note that five of the six have

some use value as ornaments, all except the stone money of Yap.

These six are the ones we will focus upon.

A. Hingston Quiggin, A Survey of Primitive Money (1949).

Another anthropologist with another useful book. Not as well

organized as Einzig, and so I used it more as a supplementary

text, but does essentially the same job and fills in a lot of the

gaps. I did most of my work going from the index, looking up the

aforementioned six different kinds of apparently fiat primitive

currency.

Teeth and Tusks

Teeth and tusks have been used as primitive currency primarily

in Oceania. Although he does give a detailed account of how the

teeth are organized and traded in Oceania, Quiggin does not do a

particularly good job of explaining the uses of tooth money,

telling us only that they are 'used freely for ornamentation',

(126-8). However, he does tell us that in Bougainville and Buka

teeth are not frequently used in ordinary trading, but instead for

marriage payments and compensation for wrongs (24). Einzing tells

us that in the Solomons, dog, porpoise, and bat teeth are used

extensively and have relatively fixed exchange values. These teeth

are used extensively in the payment of fines, the ceremonial

purchase of wives and pigs, and after the arrival of white traders,

began to circulate more widely as currency, even being accepted by

the white traders themselves. In Fiji, the teeth of Sperm whales

are used primarily as bride money and blood money (Einzing, 32).

But Fijians seem to hold these teeth in as intrinsically valuable,

and probably are perhaps best understood as being a form of

commodity money. Einzing (79) also tells us that both dogs' teeth

and boars' tusks are used in New Guinea, but fails to mention what

for. Luckily Quiggin tells us that the tusks are 'essential in

bride-price, in fines and compensations, and in death ceremonies'

(126), and since Einzing tells us that the two can be exchanged at

relatively constant rates, presumably so too are dogs' teeth, if

only indirectly.

The use of tooth money also occurs in the rather strange

'economic' system on the Admiralty Islands. Einzing tells us that

there, tooth money is used as a standard of deferred payment, as a

means for exchanges arranged in connection with marriages, and in

connection with religious rites (65). But the economic system

there is sufficiently complex that I think it best that you either

read the couple of pages on it, or I have a chat with you.

Everybody is honest and money exists to create artificial

obligations so that people are ethically obliged to produce. It

doesn't really fit into the rubric of any sort of economic system

that I am accustomed to.

The only mention of the use of teeth as currency outside of

Oceania is a brief paragraph in Quiggin, in association with the

Crow native peoples' tribe of North America. For the Crow, Elk

teeth are used in ornamental display : 'the larger the number [of

Elk teeth] displayed, the greater indication of a man's prowess in

hunting, his wealth and importance' (Quiggin, 310). He also

mentions that they can be exchanged for purchases, but the brevity

with which he describes them and the conspicuous absence of their

mention in Einzing leads me to believe that they are merely

commodities, and not money in any significant sense.

Feathers

Feathers have played the role of primitive money is a

particularly limited area; Quiggin suggests exclusively on the Banks

Islands and Santa Cruz (119). He quotes Codrington who tells us

that they were used as ornamentation, and although he suggests that

they were 'used more for prestige than trading', they were also

used for the purchase of large objects, for marriage payments, and

for fines for fornication. Einzing generally agrees, saying that

they were used as medium of exchange for large objects, and were

known to serve as a means for special payments such as ransoms,

fines and blood money (52).

Beads and Wampum

Quiggins begins his discussion of beads with the African

'aggry'. The origin of this peculiar specimen is quite completely