大象传媒

Anthropologist David Graeber examines debt in the Classical period. It was during this age that coinage first emerged as an efficient way of paying soldiers.

The spread of coinage had enormous political and intellectual consequences. It was invented on the fringes of military operations - whether in Greece, India, or China - but was quickly taken up by enterprising kingdoms, some of which gradually gobbled up their neighbours. Eventually, vast empires emerged - the Athenian, Hellenistic, and Roman empires, Magadha, Nanda, the Qin, the Han. Armies are expensive to run and, in the end, we witnessed a cycle of violence and repayment in coinage.

Debt has an important role to play in the story of coinage. While coins were invented to pay soldiers, it was through taxation that they became embedded in the lives of entire populations. Ancient rulers indebted their subjects by demanding taxes which had to be paid in coinage. David reveals that this system of taxation was in fact an ingenious ploy to make subjects feed and provide for the army by creating a universal need for coinage.

Under ancient conditions, keeping say 50,000 men supplied with provisions was an extremely challenging undertaking. By distributing coins to soldiers, which could be exchanged with locals for provisions, ancient rulers co-opted their populations into keeping their armies fed, watered and primed to keep on conquering.

Producer: Max O'Brien
A Juniper production for 大象传媒 Radio 4.