During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the slave society in China collapsed and the feudal society was gradually established. The change of production relations has promoted the development of social economy. Due to the differences in political, economic and cultural development and habits in different regions, the diversity of monetary forms in this period was formed. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, besides cloth coins, there were knife coins, ring coins, ant nose coins and gold.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period before the Qin Dynasty unified China, Chinese ancestors created and cast a round weighing coin with square holes, whose appearance implied the concept of heaven and earth. The writing is simple, the book uses big seal script, and the half-two currencies of different sizes are now commonly known as the first Qin half-two or the Warring States half-two. After Qin Shihuang unified China. On the basis of the unified balance of power system, it is the basis of unifying Qin and Ban Liang. But soon, due to tyranny and huge military expenditure, the minted currency kept losing weight and became lighter.
Copper coins in Qing dynasty followed the system of Ming dynasty, mainly casting Xiaoping coins. Small flat money: an ancient coin term, relative to big money, refers to money with only one penny. It is the most common form of copper coins, also known as flat coins. It is the smallest monetary unit in the era of using copper coins. Its diameter is about 2.4-2.5 cm and its weight is about 3-4 grams.
Fold two, three, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or even hundreds or thousands, collectively referred to as "big money".
Xianfeng is the most complicated copper coin in Qing Dynasty. Qian Wen is divided into Bao Tong, Chongbao and Yuanbao, with different denominations and different money bureaus. In the Qing dynasty, folk businesses used silver, small money used money, and money and silver went hand in hand.
Why take the form of Qin money? Mainly ring-shaped, easy to carry, the square hole is not easy to rotate through the rope, which can prevent wear. Some people think that this form expresses the world outlook of ancient people. Square hole round coins in Qin Dynasty were the earliest official legal tender in the world.
At that time, because the market in Song Dynasty was very prosperous and there were a lot of money in circulation, it was inconvenient to carry a large amount of copper coins with you, which led to jiaozi. Jiaozi is easy to carry. Cross breeding promoted the economic development of Song Dynasty at that time ~
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In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, silver began to flow into China in large quantities, becoming a metal currency as common as copper coins. During the Qing Dynasty, silver had become the main monetary unit ("two") of the country. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Mexican silver dollars began to circulate in large quantities in China. During the reign of Emperor Guangxu, China minted his own silver coins and set up a family bank to issue regular paper money.
The change of monetary form begins with the development of productive forces and the prosperity of human economic activities.
The earliest commodity exchange in human history was direct barter and barter. Barter transactions without money are often troublesome. If A needs B's goods and B doesn't need A's goods, two people can't make a deal. With the expansion of the scope of commodity exchange, its shortcomings become more and more obvious.
1. Money performs the function of medium of exchange.
In the practice of exchange, people gradually get used to using a more acceptable commodity as a "middleman" in commodity exchange. First of all, they tried to exchange their products for this commodity, and then exchanged them for the commodities they needed, which led to the emergence of money.
2. Currency performs the function of pricing unit.
The function of money as a unit of valuation is to give a certain price to a commodity. There are tens of millions of commodities on the market, and the utility evaluation of the same commodity varies widely. Therefore, it is often difficult for people to understand the exchange ratio between various commodities, and it is naturally difficult to be fair in the transaction. Because the money that can be obtained after the commodity is sold is the price of the commodity, once the commodity has formed a widely accepted price in the market transaction, people no longer need to remember the exchange ratio between various commodities one by one, just look at the price and it will be clear at a glance.
Currency has experienced the evolution from physical currency to metal currency, and then from metal currency to paper money. With the rapid development of commodity economy and the progress of computer technology, bookkeeping currency and various electronic currencies in the form of bills have replaced some paper money for circulation in recent years.
Money can be easily exchanged for all kinds of goods and finance at any time. Therefore, money not only performs the functions of exchange medium and valuation unit in commodity exchange, but also becomes the representative of property itself. As a representative of property, money can not only be stored as future purchasing power, but also be added by transferring it to others for interest. Transferring the right to use money for a period of time is the borrowing and lending of money.
In the lending activities of transferring the right to use money, the relationship between the two parties is a creditor-debtor relationship. When the creditor temporarily transfers the right to use the currency for a period of time, the user (debtor) of the currency is obliged to return it after a certain period of time and pay certain interest.