Money arose from the needs of human economic activity thousands of years ago. Since the Qin Dynasty implemented monetary unification, successive dynasties have attached great importance to the monetary system to promote economic development and stabilize social and people's livelihood. Money is also a symbol of imperial power, and whenever there is a change of regime, a change of yuan, and a major change in society, the ruler will mint and issue a new currency to announce the world.

Money also promoted the integration and development of the economies of various regions, such as the Liao, Song, and Xia Jin, although each regime minted coins, but Song money was widely circulated among the regimes, which greatly promoted the economic exchanges between the Song and Liao, Jin, and Western Xia.

A group of Song-Liao-Jinxia coins in the exhibition area of "Square Inch Currency" in the "Great Unification" unit of forging the consciousness of the Chinese national community is on display at the National Culture Palace in Beijing, which fully reflects the identification of Liao, Jin and Western Xia with the traditional Chinese currency system and Chinese culture.

Shen Kuo, author of "Mengxi Pen Talks" and a scientist of the Northern Song Dynasty, once described the civil trade between the Liao and Song Dynasties as follows: In the border area of the Liaoxi and Song Dynasties, Liao exchanged the cattle and sheep it produced for copper coins from the Northern Song Dynasty, resulting in a serious outflow of Song copper coins. After Liao obtained the Song copper coin, he "stored it in a separate warehouse as a treasure of the town country".

Similarly, Western Xia also exchanged locally produced cloth for Song copper coins. In this special period of political separation, Song copper coins have always been the hard currency of Liao, Jin, and Western Xia.

Did Liao, Jin, and Western Xia mint coins?

In fact, Liao, Jin, and Xixia all minted their own coins, and they minted round square-hole coins in the traditional Chinese style. The circular square hole pattern contains the philosophical concept of "Heavenly Round Place", reflecting the political idea of "Mandate of Heaven and Imperial Power", with "outer circle" representing "Mandate of Heaven" and "Inner Circle" symbolizing "Imperial Power". Liao, Jin, and Western Xia all strongly identified with Chinese culture, so they minted coins in this style.

Liao issued a variety of copper coins, and the minting time was earlier than that of the Song Dynasty. The first coin in Liao was the "Tianzan Tongbao" minted during the Tianzan period (922-926). The Southern Song numismatist Hong Zun described it in the Quanzhi, saying that the coin "has a diameter of nine points, weighs three baht and six bahts (lěi, ten baht is one baht, twenty-four baht is two), and the text is Tianzan Tongbao". "Tianzan Tongbao" is nearly 40 years earlier than the first coinage of the Song Dynasty, "Song Yuan Tongbao".

▲ Tianzan Tongbao.

Gold coinage was relatively late, and the first coinage was the "Zhenglong Yuanbao" minted more than 40 years after the establishment of gold. Regarding this coin, the "History of Jin" records that it was minted in the third year of King Zhenglong of Hailing (1158), and the weight and shape of the Qian Wenkai Book are similar to the Xiaoping money minted by the Song Dynasty (the most common form of copper coin, that is, a small coin).

▲Zhenglong Yuanbao.

Most of the money minted by Liao and Jin was written in Chinese characters, but the situation in Western Xia was slightly different. A total of 18 kinds of copper coins were minted in Western Xia, including 5 kinds of Western Xia copper coins and 13 kinds of Chinese copper coins. The earliest Western Xia bronze coin was the "Fusheng Treasure Money" minted during the Fusheng Chengdao period of Emperor Yizong (1053-1056), and the earliest Han bronze coin found is the "Da'an Tongbao" minted during the reign of Emperor Huizong's Da'an (1075-1085).

▲Fu Sheng treasure money.

Western Xia was influenced by the culture of the Central Plains from the beginning. In the early days, although Western Xia minting was promoted, the traditional Chinese copper coin style was adopted. In the later period, Chinese coins were fully used, which fully reflected the exchange and integration with the Central Plains culture.

Why did Song copper coins become a common currency?

Liao, Jin, and Western Xia faced a "money shortage" for a long time, which directly prompted them to use Song copper coins as a common currency.

Before the establishment of the Liao and Jin regimes, they mainly lived on nomadism or fishing and hunting, and their economic development level was much lagging behind that of the Central Plains, and their daily transactions were basically in a state of barter. The Khitan people lived a life of "horses chasing water and grass, and people leaning on cheese (dònglào, meaning cheese), and shooting strong shots to give daily use"; In the 11th century, the Jurchens were still in a state of "no money in their city, but they were easy to do with goods".

Compared with the Khitan and Jurchens, the Dangxiang people had a higher degree of economic development before the establishment of political power, and in the Tang Dynasty they were famous for "prosperous tribes, merchants near and far, and trade sheep and horses (silk fabrics in exchange for sheep and horses)". Nevertheless, social development is greatly limited by the influence of the nomadic economy.

After the establishment of political power in Liao, Jin, and Western Xia, they were influenced by the Central Plains and their social and economic development was able to make great progress. For example, after Liao and Song concluded the "Alliance of the Yuan", the two sides set up mutual markets (mutual markets) in the border areas, and economic exchanges were close. Fu Bi, the prime minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, commented on this: "There are 500,000 goods in the field."

The situation in Western Xia was similar to that in Liao, which unified the northwestern ministries and cleared the obstacles to social and economic development. In the fourth year of the Qing calendar (1044), the Song and Xia dynasties reached the "Qing Li Peace Conference", reopened the field in the border area, and greatly promoted the development of the commodity economy of Western Xia.

With the development of social economy, the demand for money in Liao, gold and Western Xia has increased sharply, however, its copper and tin resources are scarce, and the raw materials for coinage are insufficient, resulting in a shortage of copper money, forming a "money shortage". Liao had a situation of "not giving the state use" and had to rely on Song copper money. Su Zhi, a famous literary scholar of the Song Dynasty, once said: "There are no coins in the northern boundary, and public and private transactions and use the copper coins of the dynasty." ”

Jin's situation was similar to that of Liao, and in the tenth year of Dading (1170), Jin Xianzong asked the messenger who returned from Shandong what difficulties the common people had, and the messenger replied to Xianzong, "Money is the hardest." The Jin dynasty had no money, only the gold lord Yanliang minted the Zhenglong money, but the amount was not much, and the main thing was to use Song copper money.

Due to the shortage of copper money, Western Xia implemented a "money ban" policy to prohibit the outflow of copper money. According to the "Tiansheng Reform of the Old and New Law", people are not allowed to go to the border to sell money, do not destroy money, etc.

In addition, Song copper coins were also imported into Western Liao and spread to Central Asia. Zhang Fangping, the prime minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, said at the time that copper coins were treasures of the Song Dynasty and were used by all surrounding ethnic groups.

Liao, Jin, and Western Xia obtained Song copper coins

The Song Dynasty once implemented a "money ban" policy in foreign trade, and in the decade from the seventh year of Xining (1074) to the eighth year of Yuanfeng (1085), the Northern Song government "issued a new edict to reduce the money ban". During this decade, Liao and Western Xia obtained large quantities of Song copper coins through official legal trade.

Secondly, civil trade also enabled Liao and Western Xia to obtain a steady stream of Song copper coins. The Liao state privately exchanged the cattle and sheep it produced for Song copper money. Shen Kuo sighed at this: "Those who leak China's (referring to the Northern Song Dynasty) money to the north do not know its geometry. Western Xia also exchanged locally produced cloth for Song copper coins, and the "Compilation of the Continuing Zhi Tong Jian Chang" contains: "The northwest side belongs to the Rong people, and there are many goods, and it is easy to exchange copper coins in Qin and Jizhou", so that the copper money of the Northern Song Dynasty was seriously outflowed.

By the time of the Southern Song Dynasty, the imperial court still attached great importance to the outflow of copper money, and even used iron money instead of copper money as a circulation currency in the Huainan region bordering the Jin State. In order to obtain the copper coins of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Jin Dynasty used "short mo" (money that was used as a hundred dollars with less than a real number. Mo, through "hundred", for example, gold provided 100 yuan of goods, the Southern Song Dynasty only needed to pay 80 yuan) to attract the Southern Song copper money to the north.

Third, most of the areas ruled by Jin and Western Xia belonged to the old lands of the Northern Song Dynasty, so they inherited a large number of copper coins left over from the Northern Song Dynasty. These old Northern Song Dynasty coins were used as common currency. At the beginning of its establishment, gold did not start to mint currency, but chose to use these old money left over as universal currency.

In short, Liao, Jin and Western Xia used Song copper coins as the common currency, reflecting their identification with the traditional Chinese currency system and Chinese culture, and greatly promoted the economic exchanges between Song and Liao, Jin and Western Xia. This historical fact shows that the two major basins of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River in the 10th and 13th centuries, as well as the vast areas of present-day northeast and northwest, although under the control of different regimes, were closely linked and difficult to separate economically, and jointly forged the economic community of the Liao, Song, and Xiajin era.

(Liu Wenbo, a master's student at the School of History and Culture of Hebei Normal University, also contributed to this article.) )

About the author:

Zhu Anxiang is an associate professor at the College of History and Culture of Hebei Normal University and an expert in the appraisal of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.