ABSTRACT
This chapter will indicate that, contrary to the popular idea that global economic transformation started only after the European expansion to the Americas, in fact a common unit of account denominated in silver which the Mongol regime happened to establish for long-distance exchanges across the Eurasian landmass had already ignited a global monetary delocalization. Meanwhile, in contrast to earlier works emphasizing the Mongolian role in a world system, such as Abu-Lughod, this analysis makes clear the first silver century under the Mongols did not seriously transform exchanges at the ground level.
Until the 13th century, each civilization had followed its own pattern as illustrated in the four quadrants of exchange. To the extent that people exchanged proximately, whether by anonymous currency or by named debt, money worked entirely endogenously. No exogenous institution substantially intervened in autonomous local transactions until the late 13th century. Then, for the first time, a common unit of account emerged beyond the boundaries of a single civilization. The Mongol regime happened to establish a common unit of account denominated in silver for long-distance exchanges across the Eurasian landmass. The transfer of a significant quantity of silver ingots from appanages in China to the western Khanates catalyzed a widespread convergence. Sixty-five silver bars excavated from Orheiul Vechi demonstrate clearly that the tribute in silver from China had reached the Kipchap Khanate. Three peaks of silver mintage in London from the late 13th century to the mid-14th century coincide with the peaks of remittance from the appanages in China. The unprecedented monetary transformations originated especially in the Lower Yangzi, in which the paper money issued by the Yuan displaced silver westward and displaced copper coins to Japan and to Java. The emergence of new marketplaces in Holland and Japan seems to have been almost perfectly synchronous. The establishment of new markets increased from the 13th century and peaked in the 14th century, before stagnating in the 15th century. In the end, however, the common unit of account in silver was not accompanied by a popular circulation of silver items and did not seriously affect the methods of exchange at the ground level. The substantial contraction in distant trade after the collapse of the Mongol regime, however, precipitated a divergence between currency-dependent systems of exchange in the east and credit-dependent systems of exchange in the west, and this discrepancy paved the way for the global silver march starting from South America and reaching China and India in the late 16th century.
