Title: Cowries to Crypto The History of Money, Currency and Wealth
Author: Jame Di Biasio
Illustrator: Harry Harrison
Publisher: OANDA
ISBN: 978-1-7342286-0-1
I can safely say that this is the most attractive book about the history of money that I've ever seen. It makes an immediate and positive first impression, in a way that I do not recall The History of Banking making upon me when I started reading it in the autumn of 1979 after joining Midland Bank International Division as an ambitious young graduate.
The illustrations are eye-catching, as one would hope, and relevant and amusing from start to finish. As is the text, including the short introduction by David Hodge, OANDA's chief marketing officer, explaining its genesis as the moment when a pub quiz unexpectedly featured a money section. Of the five questions put, he was only confident of the answers to two.
The book proper begins with a chapter called Cowries and ends with a chapter called Crises. For anyone with even a slight awareness of the history of money as a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account, that will resonate immediately.
It ends with a detailed and fond reference to The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by the late Douglas Adams. From cowry/cowrie shells and the stones of Yap to Flainian Pobble Beads and the Triganic Pu. Beyond crypto, even if Adams wrote his books before cryptocurrency was a twinkle in the eye of Satoshi Nakamoto.
Then again, digressing slightly, did we ever once see cash change hands in an episode of Star Trek? And in the cult television series, The Village economy ran on the basis of invisible credits.
There is an irreverence to the writing that sets it apart from academic tomes on the subject, which tend to treat it as something being handed over at the top of a mountain in the Old Testament.
“Prostitution is often called the oldest profession, but surely that honour goes to commodities brokers,” we read on page 10. I'm not sure how that will go down with the commodity broking community, but it certainly made this reader smile.
Any non-fiction book that tells an experienced reader something new is to be applauded. I had no idea that to the Incans, gold was the sweat of the sun and silver was the tears of the moon. And I love the notion that the conquistadors held sway in South America because they had access to credit. I rather thought it was a combination of gunpowder, military knowhow and previously unknown disease, but it rings a bell. Look at the debts run up in the 20th century by the Allied Forces in the winning of WWII, which could be the basis for a second volume from OANDA.
On page 82, we read that while Spain's main banker understood money in the 16th century, Spain's rulers did not. Does that not sound disturbingly familiar in the here and now? Especially when followed on the next page by: “The spread of Italian banking...coincided with a borrowing binge among rulers throughout Europe...”
Technology might change, but human behaviour remains resolutely the same.
If I'm going to nitpick, I would suggest that the spelling of cowry/cowrie should have been standardised. Both spellings are acceptable, but it should be one or the other, not both, within about two inches of one another on pages 10-11. And given the historical depth and breadth of the topic, I would strongly suggest future editions carry an index.
But for now, I would suggest equally strongly that if you are looking for a birthday/unbirthday/Christmas present for someone you know with an interest in money that goes beyond having enough to buy the daily bread, this book will fit the bill. My copy is most definitely an excellent addition to my personal money library.
