Changes

Today, most people take the existence of paper money for granted and few know how its use originated and developed throughout history. In Western countries such as the United States, paper money has a relatively short existence going back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but in China paper currency first began circulating over 1,000 years ago. The development of paper money was the result of a larger historical process whereby the leaders of the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279) had to devise new ways to compensate for the demand in metal currency that was the result of their expanding economy. In the end, although the Song Dynasty collapsed for a variety of reasons, their use of paper currency was adopted by later Chinese dynasties, eventually spreading to other Asian peoples. Despite having a profound impact on Asian economic history, paper currency would be one of many inventions/discoveries that never left east Asia and was only discovered in Europe independently several centuries later.