银行英语教材 Banking English.doc 58页

Unit One Introduction Section One: The Introduction of currency Passage One: The Origin of Currency In ancient history coins circulated as money long before paper money was used. The earliest coins are believed to have originated independently in both China and the ancient kingdom of Lydia in the 7th century BC. In about 500 BC, The famous Persian King, Darius, revolutionized the economy of his empire by using coins as a substitute for barter. Evidence of this change has been found in the well-preserved inscriptions and rock carvings in Persepolis in Iran. Paper money appeared in China in the 8th century. It is well-known that printing with movable blocks was invented in China approximately 50 BC, and paper was firsts manufactured there in about 100 AD, both necessary to the manufacture of paper currency. The earliest paper money consisted of receipts that were issued either for valuables deposited at special shops for safekeeping or for taxes paid-in kind and held on deposit in a provincial center rather than being shipped to the capital. Visitors to China during the 12th and 13th centuries were impressed by the use of paper money. Marco Polo regarded “the coinage of this paper money” as a novel way of doing what the alchemists had tried. In the 13th century the government of Genghis Khan exchanged its paper notes for gold, and counterfeiting paper money was a capital offense. Although governmental units in China had given up the issuance of paper money by the year 1500 because of difficulties with oversupply and inflation, private banks continued to issue it. In Europe during the Middle Ages there were important developments in banking and credit in the large trading centers of Florence, Venice, Genoa, Constantinople and Bruges. However, these centers did not use paper money, even though banks transferred funds with letters of exchange and extended credit in the form of delayed payments. It is believed that paper currency was first used in E