never clear as to how.6 In the years after Columbus, as Spanish and Portuguese adventurers were scouring the world for new sources of gold and silver, these vague stories disappear. Certainly no one reported discovering a land of barter. Most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century travelers in the West Indies or Africa assumed that all societies would necessarily have their own forms of money, since all societies had governments and all governments issued money.7 Adam Smith, on the other hand, was determined to overturn the conventional wisdom of his day. Above all, he objected to the notion that
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