The Currency and Men Bearing the Name Frank
An inscription meaning 'King of the Franks' became the name of a currency. A great king established a silver system that lasted a thousand years, and a printer in a distant land supported the credit of paper money.
King of the Franks
The name of the currency, the franc, originated from the inscription on a certain gold coin. 'FRANCORUM REX'—King of the Franks. This was the legend inscribed on a gold coin struck to pay the ransom of Jean II.
When the Emperor's Name Vanishes
Before they called themselves 'King of the Franks', the Frankish kings who established kingdoms in Western Europe struck different coins. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, they produced pseudo-imperial gold trientes that copied the face and titles of the emperor in Constantinople. However, the emperor's name eventually disappeared from the coinage, to be replaced by the names of the mint and the moneyer.
A Silver Standard for a Thousand Years
In Frankish history, there is another important king: Charlemagne. At a time when large gold coins had disappeared from Western Europe and people were using small silver coins, he reformed the silver coinage system. In 794, a decree was issued at the Synod of Frankfurt.
It stipulated that 240 deniers were to be struck from one livre, that is, one pound of silver. Previously, a pound had been reckoned as 264 deniers, but this was changed to 240. This number was divisible by both 12 and 20. One livre was 20 sous, and one sou was 12 deniers. This system of accounting survived in Great Britain for over a thousand years as the pound, shilling, and pence system. The decree also stipulated that the coins be struck from pure silver and bear Charlemagne's name.
The Man Who Printed Leaf Veins
In a different time and place, during the age of paper money, a young man appeared: a printer by the name of Benjamin Franklin. In 1729, he wrote 'A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency', in which he argued for the role of paper money in a land short of specie.
Franklin not only argued his case but also took on the printing of colonial currency himself. And he devised an ingenious method to prevent counterfeiting. It was a technique called 'nature printing', which involved taking a mould of a real leaf and printing its intricate vein patterns onto the paper. This pattern deterred counterfeiters, and the young printer's skill supported the credit of the paper money.
But from across the sea, cold eyes began to look upon that paper.
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The Accounts of a Kingdom Facing South and Beyond the Sea
In the second half of the twelfth century, Castile struck gold coins with inscriptions entirely in Arabic. From this south-facing kingdom would later emerge the tax system imposed on the silver of the New World.
The Unit of Weight Called the Grain
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How Inheritance Tax Prevented the Rise of Zaibatsu — 1905, 1945, 1950
A tax created to fund the Russo-Japanese War became, forty-five years later, a tax with a top rate of 90 percent. In between lies the dissolution of the headquarters of four zaibatsu. We will examine this through three key years.
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Everything in these pieces comes from the material itself.