ABSTRACT
This conclusion will summarize the three epochs of the global history of money viewed from the ground and indicate that modern common understandings of money are not always applicable to the past. Popular frameworks such as Gresham’s law, the quantity theory of money and special purpose money by Polanyi cannot help us explain monetary phenomena in history, since they have neglected the complementarity among monies. Ubiquitous currency circuits in history reflect diversified chains of exchanges that could not be integrated through a single exchange rate. No teleology is valid in monetary history, though human societies happened to experience certain irreversible transformations in the association of the four quadrants, such as the proliferation of banking systems. Many thinkers throughout history and across the world have noticed the plurality of money in practice but failed to theorize about the complementary relationship among monies. In order to understand the transformations throughout monetary history, we should recognize that social institutions work to provide flexibility in fluctuating circumstances as well as to secure certainty.
