The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

540 THE FREEMAN Septembering the first and second centuriesthe Roman Empire had a severebalance of trade problem with Indiabecause of the commerce inspices, gems and other Indiangoods desired by the luxury-lovingRomans.Debasement in IndiaWith the decline of the KushanEmpire its gold coinage becameseverely debased, especially afterabout 200 ~.D. After about 320A.D. the Gupta kings also continuedgold coinage in importantquantities. After the decline ofthe Gupta realm, Le., after about450 A.D., a number of Hindudynasties continued gold coinage.The famous uninscribed and enigmaticelephant pagodas of perhapsabout 1300 and later are nowbelieved.! to be the private productsof Indian goldsmiths. In thenorth the Islamic rulers (the Sultansof Delhi and subsequently theMughal Emperors) struck gold inlarge quantities. In the south, theHindu Vijayanagar Empire strucklarge amounts of a very neat goldcoinage between 1377 A.D. andthe disastrous Battle of Tallikotain 1565. Beginning with the 16thcentury, various European powersstruck gold series for their territoriesin India; the Portuguese,the Dutch, the French, the Danesand especially the British, who. first imitated the trusted goldcoinage of the moribund MughalEmpire before striking gold inthe European style.In Japan, which has gold minesthat have been worked since medievaltimes, gold was used in theform of oval plates punched withvarious devices. During the 19thcentury base gold rectangles wereproduced in considerable quantities.Just as the Meiji Erabrought so many other changes toJapan, its earliest years saw theintroduction of a very beautifulgold coinage of occidental stylebased.on the U.S. gold denominations.So highly prized are 20 yenpieces of 1870 (46,139 struck)that they fetch over one millionyen today. With the exception ofa few gold issues in this century,China has virtually no traditionof the coining of gold, although ithas been prized for artistic usesfor many centuries in China.3000 Years of GoldI have surveyed the history ofgold coinage in some detail herein order to show what a greateconomic role it has played innearly every civilization (with thenotable exception of the Chinese),European traditions of the monetaryuse of gold can be tracedback for nearly three millenia inthe form of gold coins alone.The decline of gold coinage wehave witnessed during the last