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Episode N°1 de Histoire des Concepts Economiques 

​What makes bartering so special and so related to humans ? Let’s discover the history of bartering through different periods and different cultures.

The Barter System

The barter system is an ancestral system of exchange : people exchange goods and services for other goods and services in return.

The creation of the barter system

​The origin of barter is the same as that of man. But in the Paleolithic era, the hunters' economy of survival could not give rise to significant exchanges. 
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In the Neolithic, with the appearance of agriculture and animal husbandry, men began to exchange their surpluses on the basis of barter. Stocks were discovered and have already proved the existence of the "trading network" as early as the Neolithic period. Several examples can be cited: obsidian used on the island of Cyprus came from a distant volcano in Anatolia (Turkey); yellow flint from Touraine (France) was exported to Switzerland; yellow amber (fossil resin) from the Baltic countries reached the Mediterranean basin. The first traces of bartering date all the way back to 6000 BC.

Bartering through the eras

Phoenicians bartering with ancient Britons by Frank Moss Bennett  (1874–1953)

Bartering was introduced by Mesopotamian tribes and was fully was adopted by Phoenicians, who bartered goods between themselves and to other advanced civilizations located in various cities. They also helped facilitate the exchange of cultures, ideas, and knowledge between major cradles of civilization such as Greece, Egypt and even Celtic Britons. ​

Babylonians also developed an improved bartering system, where goods and services were exchanged for food, tea, weapons, and spices. In the same period, salt was another essential item that could be exchanged and was widely recognized from the Roman Empire to African tribes. In fact, the value and the recognition of salt was so high that Roman soldiers' salaries were often paid with it. ​​

                       In Antiquity, salt was sometimes traded for gold !

​Chinese vendors kept the secret of silk production for a very long time and therefore ensured a monopoly of China in the silk trade. Every culture had its own distinct element of Barter, for example, olive and olive oil from the Mediterranean, silver, and iron from China, fine cotton textiles from India, ivory from Africa, spices and tortoise shells from Arabia are few such examples. The common factor that united those different cultures was the universality of bartering. As the empires on the silk route started becoming more of more segmented with Roman Empire in the west, Hans in East, Ottoman in Central, reliability on barter system started to decrease significantly.

In the Middle Ages, European explorers traveled around the globe to barter crafts and furs in exchange for silks and perfumes, notably in the Orient or in Asia. Active trade on the silk road began around 120 BC between different cultures and ended in the 1450s with the fragmentation of the Mongol empire. The nature of trading varied between this period, rom the barter system to currency and barter altogether. As the name suggests, silk exchanges from China constituted a large chunk in the barter trade on the Silk Route.

In the 16th century, when the ships of the European explorers landed in unknown lands, they offered glassware in exchange for fresh food. It was also during this period that others established the triangular trade based on the scandalous exchange of black slaves from Guinea for old guns and colored glass beads.

Due to a lack of money, security and trust in banks,  bartering became necessary in the 1930s during the Great Depression to obtain food and diverse other services  through groups or between people who acted similar to banks, but with a system of barter.

The replacement of bartering by money

Today, in East Africa and New Guinea, livestock are still frequently used as payment. On the other hand, although barter has long been the only means of exchange between people and between peoples, it has been gradually refined over the course of history by taking objects or animals as trade items.
​The first real currency of exchange was in fact the cowrie. Already used as "money" in China 3,000 years ago, these small seashells were then called upon to play the same role in India and Thailand, in West and East Africa. Relatively regular in shape and size, they were convenient and simple to count.

                                    A gold coin used in Lydia (7th century BC)

To avoid the weighing and the inconveniences of barter, it is in the kingdom of Lydia where King Croesus reigned and where the river Pactole flows (in present-day Turkey) that the first coins were invented at the end of the 7th century BC.

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