Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by David Graeber

China never minted gold or silver coins. Merchants used precious metals in the form of bullion, but the coins in actual circulation were basically small change: cast bronze disks, usually with a hole in the middle so that they could be strung together. Such strings of “cash” were produced in extraordinary numbers, and very large amounts had to be assembled for large-scale transactions: when wealthy men wished to make donations to temples, for instance, they had to use oxcarts to carry the money. The most plausible explanation is that, especially after unification, Chinese armies were enormous—some Warring States armies numbered up to a million—but not nearly as professional or well paid as those of kingdoms farther west, and from Qin and Han times on, rulers were careful to ensure that this remained the case, to make sure their armies never became an independent power base.