ABSTRACT
This chapter examines cowrie shells and cowrie money in Yunnan from the second half of the first millennium BCE to the late seventeenth century, as an Indian influence in a Southeast Asian-Chinese world. It firstly provides a brief historical background of Yunnan, then moves on to examine cowrie shells and cowrie money in Yunnan during various periods. Effort has been made to review the long-term existence of a cowrie money system in Yunnan and its seemingly sudden collapse during the Ming-Qing transition in the mid-seventeenth century. In sum, the chapter shows that the emergence, long-term existence and collapse of cowrie money in Yunnan must be understood in a global-local context.
