Illecgal Mintage Of Copper Coins In The Ming Dynasty

Illegal mintage of copper coins was a long-standing problem in Chinese history.Especially in the Ming Dynasty,because of the special monetary policies and complicated currency system,the illegal mintage of coins was much more serious than it in the prior dynasties.The degradation of coins,the counterfeit of ancient coins,the illicit mintage conducted by the government were the obvious features of the illegal coin mintage in the Ming Dynasty.Chronologically,the illegal mintage evolved from the slight to the increasingly serious.Spatially,it spread and transferred from the developed areas to the underdeveloped areas.In the Ming Dynasty,the illegally minted coins played an important part in the commodity circulation.However,illegal coins could not circulate constantly.Therefore,the illegal mintage also impeded the development of commodity economy to some degree.Compared with other historical periods,the reasons for the prevalence of illegal mintage in the Ming Dynasty are more complicated.Firstly,because of the mintage prohibition policy implemented the early Ming Dynasty,the lack of copper materials and some other reasons,the amount of officially minted coins was much smaller than the prior dynasty and was not abundant to meet the needs of the market.In addition,the tributary system led to a large number of outflow of the officially minted coins and the lack of coin supply,and therefore it created the market of the circulation of the illegally minted coins.Secondly,the differences in the specification and the dimension of official coins exacerbated the Gresham effect,making it easier for people to make profits from the illegal mintage.Thirdly,the government was changing the monetary policies frequently,especially the uncertainty of the policies on the problems of the privately minted coins and the ancient coins,and it aggravated the disorders in the field of currency circulation.In order to rectify the illegal mintage,the Ming government took various measures,including punishment,prohibition,etc.However,the measures were hardly effective and the situation of the widespread of the illegally minted coins was not improved.There are two reasons for this outcome.One of them is the serious problem of political corruption in the late Ming Dynasty.Both the official authority and the craftsmen of the mints were participating in and getting profits from the illegal mintage.Another reason is that the enormous accumulation and the long-sustained illegal situation of the mintage,and because of these,the government could neither handle the illegally minted coins wned by the people nor prohibit the circulation of them.The disorder of copper circulation led people to stop using copper coins and replaced the copper ones by the silver coins.At the same time,the government also carried out a series of reformation measurements,corresponding to the trend of currency usage,and all of them accelerated the process of silver monetization.