AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Coins and Paper Money
Under Japanese occupation from 1937 to 1945, the Chinese snuck messages of resistance and protest into some of their paper money. A banknote shows a portrait of Confucius with his hands making an obscene gesture rather than clasped in prayer as they normally would have been. This is just one example but currency has long been used to spread political and other messages. Yes, already in the Greek period you have for example a really simple propaganda value that we probably don't even think of. You have also different kinds of guards or the pride of a city to say this is us versus the others. That is in particular exemplified also later in the Roman Republic which is a really fascinating case where the