Davies: The History of Money

Davies, Glyn, ISBN 0708317170

University of Wales Press, UK

Money. Do you know what it is? Does it mean different things to different people or is it always the same at its core?

Roy Davies has produced a masterful examination of media of exchange, setting money into a historical, economic and political context. It’s a helter-skelter ride through history, swooping and touching on civilisations and how they did business, funded their treasuries and paid their servants including armies.

Indeed, with the story that the Romans simply minted currency to pay their army, there is even an argument hinted at but not expressly raised that governments do not need taxes: they can increase the money supply to pay for goods and services and can sell other goods and services back to the population to bring money out of circulation.

The book reads like a novel but is packed with academic analysis in a completely readable style.

The origins of money and banking are considered possibly even pre-human as exchange or barter may have been - and may be - a trait in certain animals.

Davies has superb credentials to write such a book and his work is such a clear exposition of money that anyone who wants to understand how money, in both the narrow sense of state recognised currency and its wider sense of any medium of exchange works, should immediately read. This is emphatically not a book to keep on a bookshelf: it is a book that, if read with an eye to how the issues referred to can be abused, will teach much about the ways that money can is, and can be, laundered.

It is not a book about money laundering: it’s a book about money. To see the opportunities for laundering you will need to engage your brain. On one level, it is an un-put-down-able tale of the development of the grease that keeps the machinery of civilisation turning. On a deeper level, it is an examination of how society shapes and is shaped by money. On a yet deeper level, it lays bare the essence of money so that the opportunity for financial crime of several sorts can be seen.

Read it and think about it. If you are a jobsworth MLRO enjoy the story. On the other hand if you really want to understand the root of your function, pay close attention and think. It will change the way you view much about your work.

Simply essential.

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