Several questions regarding tribes, war, and currency

[Masada]

How was this credit measured? Was it a precise thing- "Bobby owes Jimmy a chicken and two peppers"- or was there a common metric? (edit: I think "unit of account" is the term I'm looking for here.)

Usually in terms of the local staple food.

 

[Yeekim]

The point isn't that social currencies can be used to obtain marriages, alliances, etc., it's that they have no other purpose. You could never take wampum down to the village market- which did not exist- and trade it for a roll of skins.

Only because there were no village market...
Trading wampum for skins was exactly what what Europeans did, which leads me to suspect that while wampum was special in being a "social currency", first and foremost used to obtain marriages and such, nothing precluded using it as a "regular" good within constraints of their gift/barter economy.

 

[Traitorfish]

Only because there were no village market...
Trading wampum for skins was exactly what what Europeans did, which leads me to suspect that while wampum was special in being a "social currency", first and foremost used to obtain marriages and such, nothing precluded using it as a "regular" good within constraints of their gift/barter economy.

Why does it lead you to suspect that?

 

[sophie]

I remember coming across this in a movie (perhaps The Twilight Samurai, though that seems rather late) where the status of a samurai was in how much rice he got in salary.

I was referencing the fact that under Hideyoshi land was valued, and taxes were thereby collected in barrels of rice.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Korea kept that system going into the 19th century.

 

[Yeekim]

Why does it lead you to suspect that?

Because it shows that using wampum that way wasn't considered "sacrilegious" or something. So don't you think that possibility of using it as a "regular" medium of exchange (similar to corn, tobacco or whatever) would've occurred to the Iroquois on their own, without Europeans "teaching" it to them?

 

[Traitorfish]

Because it shows that using wampum that way wasn't considered "sacrilegious" or something. So don't you think that possibility of using it as a "regular" medium of exchange (similar to corn, tobacco or whatever) would've occurred to the Iroquois on their own, without Europeans "teaching" it to them?

There's no reason for us to believe as much, no, at least as far as I've read. Early exchange with Europeans was often structured as a sort of "voluntary miscommunication", in which the Indians participated in the process as an exchange of gifts, part of a larger network of inter-communal gift-giving, and the Europeans participated in it as commercial exchange, each aware of and at least in the short-term content with this difference of opinion. It's only later, as Indians become economically and politically dependent on European trade, that they start to engage in open commerce with Europeans.

Usually in terms of the local staple food.

So would that still be described as "barter" in the Smithian three-chickens-for-a-pig sense?

 

[Hygro]

"Medium of exchange" is the word you were looking after. Southeast Asia for a long time used Indian cloth.

That wasn't at all what he was looking for.

 

[Masada]

Yeah, I picked that mistake up ages ago. I don't seem to have gone through with the edit for some reason.