Briefly about the history of paper money
Briefly about the history of paper money
Paper money entered into the life of the humansociety for a long time. They are very convenient in comparison with heavy coins. A small sheet of paper with printed figures replaces a huge number of coins. Thick bundles of money are one of the fetishes of modern times, part of a man's dream of "normal life."
The history of paper money, like paper as a whole,begins in China. In the 8th century AD, the Chinese state began printing paper money that could be exchanged for coins. Thanks to the uncontrolled emission of unsecured money, an economic collapse ensued, and the people of China for a long time lost interest in money from paper.
Even before the advent of paper money in China,The Middle East received a spread of debt obligations. In all likelihood, they came there from ancient Egypt. The ancient world had a wide and extensive system of debt obligations, bearer receipts often replaced money, although they had neither protection nor uniformity.
After the appearance in Europe of numerousJewish population, the Middle Eastern (it's also an ancient) system of receipts and bills took root there too. Jewish merchants and moneylenders used the system they were familiar with, and the local population could not but pay attention to this and not borrow such a convenient method of calculation.
The very first paper money in the Europeancontinent appeared in the 16th century in the Dutch city of Leiden during the siege of the city and were to replace silver. The first European paper money in the form that was customary for us was released in 1661 in Sweden. In the same century, issued their banknotes and the British. European paper money in fact combined the merits of Chinese paper money (uniformity) and debt obligations (limited emission, provision of precious metals).
In Russia, paper money first appeared whenPeter the Third, however, the turnover came only under Catherine II. The Empress established two banks in the largest Russian cities-Moscow and St. Petersburg. These were black paper-printed paper sheets of a single pattern, little resembling modern money. In this case, they already had protection in the form of watermarks.
Usual kind of paper money found only in the 19th century. It was then on the bills there were individual numbers and an original drawing.
