![]() ![]() Only six days later after this proclamation, the "Chun" was officially changed to be written in Hanzi as "淳". In the year 1173 during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong the period title was proclaimed to be Chunxi with the "Chun" written as "纯". After Wang Anshi reformed the fiscal administration of the Southern Song between 10, silver became a vital element in administrative book-keeping, especially in certain regions rich in silver such as modern-day Sichuan. ĭespite the large variety in different media of exchange, Southern Song dynasty documents always measure prices in bronze coins ( guàn 貫, and wén 文), which includes the value of silver bullion itself. The Song government's general inability to create enough bronze wén coins to circulate helped strengthen this monetary diversity that would impede trade, even though the Northern Song had enough bronze for this demand and to even create large coins called " biscuit coins", the southern regions lacked these resources after they had lost the North to the Jin. These separate regional currency standards created distinct regional characters that would often hinder interregional trade between them. The Song dynasty had several "monetary regions" which all had their own separate combination of bronze, and/or iron coins, paper money, and silver sycees in circulation. The Southern Song would suffer from what had been called "currency famines" or Qian Huang ( 錢 荒), during the mid-13th century, this was because the production of bronze coinage had fallen to merely 2 to 3% of what it had been under the Northern Song, meanwhile the relative value of silver compared to bronze had steadily increased leading to the Song government adopting silver as the new standard as the value of silver would remain pretty much standard at the entire duration of the Southern Song while the value of bronze would fluctuate enormously. Background Ī coin with a clockwise inscription and with the year of minting on the reverse, cast in the 3rd year of the Qing Yuan era (1197). Despite the chronic shortages of copper the Southern Song used special coins as a form of psychological warfare against Jin army defectors, and copper coins (and later silver sycees) would remain the standard of administration even for the newly introduced paper money. Iron cash coins also started to be used in greater numbers, at first due to the lack of copper, but later even as more copper was found the production of iron cash coins remained cheaper and an abundance of iron made it more attractive for the government to produce, while several problems such as the fact that iron is harder to inscribe, and that iron corrodes faster ensured the continued production of copper cash coins. The Southern Song dynasty saw the emergence of paper money, while coins were increasingly becoming a rarity. Ĭoins from the Song dynasty have appeared in variants written in either standard (top-bottom-right-left) or clockwise (top-right-bottom-left). The Southern Song government preferred to invest in their defenses (as its incapable military easily fell to the Jin dynasty) while trying to remain passive towards the Jin dynasty establishing a long peace until the Mongols eventually annexed the Jin before marching down to the Song establishing the Yuan dynasty. The government of the Song was forced to establish a new capital city at Lin'an (present day Hangzhou) which wasn't near any sources of copper so the quality of the cash coins produced under the Southern Song significantly deteriorated compared to the cast copper-alloy cash coins of the Northern Song dynasty. ![]() The Southern Song dynasty refers to an era of the Song dynasty after Kaifeng was captured by the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in 1127. Clockwise inscriptions on the observe mint marks, and years on reserve are very typical elements of Southern Song coinage styles. ![]()
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