Currency notes, apart from its obvious uses, have played a key role in documenting history and culture

Money. We see it, use it and exchange it daily but do we really notice this medium of exchange and the imagery that it bears?

It is the one human invention that has played a continuous and pivotal role in shaping the fabric of our existences – our history, our traditions, our culture, our interactions. The economic aspect of money, wealth and power have been greatly spoken off, written about, discussed abundantly and debated highly richly.

However, the daily banknote, the actual artifact at the heart of it all has not really been noticed or even researched, despite of the fact that banknotes offer an extremely rare window across time and geography, in documenting our histories and perhaps, even shaping our futures.

Today the banknote stands at the crossroads along with digital payment gateways and though most debate that it will follow the path of the dodo, I disagree. It still holds a value that can be touched, seen and felt close to our hearts and deep in our pockets offering a sense of security, familiarity and trust. It is still very much the real thing exchanged across the world as acceptable legal tender. To know if it survives, only time will tell but until then it’s worth its value to trace the banknote story.

The beginnings

The story of money begins when our ancestors learned that they could trade for things they wanted rather than produce themselves. The first primitive populations resorted to a simple form of barter.

However, the absence of a standard of value and diversity of products made exchanges difficult. One man grew rice, another implements, and still another collected animal furs. The need for money as a common medium of exchange, was felt even more acutely in the first agricultural civilizations with settlements and specialisation.

Added to that the storage and movement of large as well as perishable commodities made way to metallic money-precious and semiprecious. Whatever be its form, for money to be effective it has to fulfil three criteria; serve as a common medium of exchange, be a unit of account or measurement and an accepted store of value.

Historians believe that the first metal coins were minted in the Lydian kingdom now western Turkey, in the second half of 7 B.C. These first coins, shaped like large beans, bore a primitive stamp, probably one of the early examples of branding on money. Coins are thus credited to be the first forms of money used for documenting information and history. Of course, the modern banknote that followed changed the entire narrative as it was produced in colour with mind-boggling printing rendering the banknote as a canvas of communicating shared identities.

Did you know that paper banknotes from around the world are not really paper but are made from cotton fibre and linen rendering greater durability and strength?

The first written accounts of ancient paper money were issues by the Chinese Imperial Treasury in 1374. It was during this time that Marco Polo reported their use introducing this idea to the west. The invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg combined with advances in trade, mercantile banking, legal contracts and bills of exchange, devaluation and shortage of precious and semi-precious metals, the paper banknote seemed like the best fit for modern money.

The idea was not foreign. In fact, it borrowed from the existing bills of exchange and promissory. Traders left their coins with the merchants and used handwritten receipts that they gave them instead, all in good faith and great convenience. Although the banknote completely fit the criteria of money, it was its first form that lacked an inherent value as compared to its predecessors like coins, livestock, crops, etc. It relied on trust, the philosophical premise on which modern money rests. The imagery and words that it carries have thus been entrusted to communicate confidence for its effective exchange.

Basis of trust

First introduced by the Bank of England, the clause “Promise to pay the bearer” remains as a statement of confidence and authority. It can also be seen on all of India’s banknotes.

One of the earliest modern banknotes was introduced in Sweden in 1666 almost 350 years ago. Since then, the banknotes are here to stay. However, the real surge of paper money flooded our world in the 20th century with the two world wars, the end of colonialism and the rise of new nations and the shortage of metallic reserves. The paper banknote fit the bill.

Even the British replaced the circulating 1-Rupee silver coin with a banknote in 1917. Although, they retained the image of the coin featured both on the obverse and reverse to instil confidence and contribute towards instant recognition through the printed imagery.

All credit must be given to the banknote for widening the template of money and the idea of showcasing people, monuments, achievements, significant occasions and events has changed its narrative by metamorphosing money from being merely a medium of exchange to a medium of communication.

The writer, proprietor of Money Talks, is an independent scholar researching the art, design and symbolism of banknote imagery from around the world