Seeker's Thoughts: Paper Money in Song China: How the World's First Banknotes Began

Seeker's Thoughts: Paper Money in Song China: How the World's First Banknotes Began

Song dynasty jiaozi paper money note. Image: Jiao zi.jpg (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons Imagine paying for a house with a cart full of iron coins. In early eleventh-century Sichuan that wasn't a joke. It was the problem that pushed China toward the world's first government-issued paper money. A shortage of the wrong kind of metal Sichuan merchants had a headache. Copper was scarce in the region, so local authorities issued iron coins ins…