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Last time I covered selecting an economic structure for your world, whether it’s a medieval fantasy or a science fiction space adventure. Now, in order for our economic structure to work, we need to have currency and trade!
Currency
Currency is essential for any society. I do not mean it has to necessarily be money. Currency can be anything that your society sees as valuable. For example, indigenous tribes used wampum as currency. Wampum are beads made from mollusk shells that hold great value both economically and culturally for indigenous tribes and was recognized by Massachusetts as currency in 1650 and, in fact, was the first legal currency.
So maybe your fantasy story doesn’t use coinage. Perhaps it uses precious gems or metal or other resources. Or your science fiction could use something similar to Bitcoin, which is just digital currency.
Characteristics of Currency
There are no hard and fast rules about how you create your currency, but looking at historical currency, you may want to consider things such as: rarity, weight and uniformity, divisibility, and exchange rate.
Rarity:
You don’t want your currency system to be based on something incredibly rare and hard to come by. This will limit any expansion of the economy because, eventually, you aren’t going to find any more. So, if your society uses a precious jewel as currency, but that jewel is getting harder and harder to find, then your economy will eventually collapse because there will come a time when currency cannot be found (unless that’s the goal in your story in order to introduce a new type of currency, then go for it!). You also don’t want to use something that is abundant and easily attainable, because then nothing will stop citizens of your world from counterfeiting. Unless, again, that’s your goal.
Weight and Uniformity:
Keep your currency something that is easy to carry. You don’t want large stone tablets to be your main form of currency. You aren’t going to want to lug that around everywhere you go. Paper, beads, coins, and even gems are all easy to tuck into a pocket or a pouch. Or, even using digital currency, you can have something like a debit card or credit card, or using a tablet or other electronic device that fits in a pocket and can be used with ease.
You also want your currency values to be consistent. You don’t want to have a hexagonal shaped coined that is worth $5 and then a round coin with a hole in the center also worth $5. If you choose coins, make them all the same shape, but they can vary by size and color or material to indicate their value.
Divisibility:
Things have wildly different values. So, if you’re using physical currency, you need to have different units of currency. If your character is buying a loaf of bread, that is going to cost far less than buying a horse. If your bread costs $1 and a horse cost $200, you don’t want to have only one unit of currency because lugging around $200 in coins can be incredibly tiresome. So maybe you have a couple coins that represent $100 and a others that represent $1. Ancient Mesopotamia traders used to record amounts on clay tablets that showed proof that they had provided a good or service and they could use that tablet to redeem the amount of money owed to them.
Exchange Rate:
If you have different forms of currency in your world, you will want to have exchange rates. Take the Harry Potter world, for example. The money used by Muggles can be exchanged at Gringotts for wizarding money and vice versa. This allows for transition between the muggle world and the wizarding world. Or, you could have a universal type of currency that can be used by say, merchants, who frequently do business in other countries with different monetary systems.
Trade
Every society has trade. It’s a pretty common thing, because, lets face it, not every country can produce everything. A lot of resources are determined by climate and location. For instance, a desert society is not going to have access to very many trees or perhaps not the type they need. So where do they get them? By trading!
The Silk Road is a prime example of a network of trade routes. It stretched through Asia, Europe, and Africa. It originated in the 2nd Century BCE with the Han Dynasty and was popular until the 15th century when sea exploration became easier thanks to advancing technologies and colonization became popular.
Popular trade goods included textiles, ivory, spices, tea, gemstones, porcelain, etc. The Silk Road also facilitated the exchange of ideas, language, technology, and cultural traditions.
Trading hubs were strategically located along the Silk Road and people would travel from a whole host of diverse backgrounds in order to buy and sell and trade goods.
So, you can start from scratch, but this is a great example to use as a basis for any of your trade routes. It could be a huge network or something small and can easily work for both fantasy and science fiction.
For example, a book series by Nathan Lowell called Trader’s Tales From The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper, is literally a book about space merchants and the first book touches on trading and how the main character and his friends buy goods on one planet and sell them on another. The whole series is excellent, but the first book is my favorite.
Even today countries still trade with each other. Goods are imported and exported every day. For example, Germany exports vehicles, machinery, pharmaceutical products, etc., but they import things like crude oil and petroleum, natural gas, vehicle parts, etc.
Not every country (or planet) can have every resource available, so establishing trade routes is vital to a believable world. You don’t have to have every single thing figured out, but getting a general idea of how trade in your universe works is a good idea. It can even be used as a plot device!
Conclusion
Here is a great video that discusses economy and currency in fantasy and science fiction!
I hope this has been helpful with your world building. Next time I will touch on Crime and Legal Systems. Write On!
Further Reading
Did you miss the last post? Check it out below!
Wanna read some fiction? Check out my serialized western!
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Good information! And very helpful. I am working on a novel and am going back to adjust some parts of the worldbuilding and currency was one of them:)
Oh good, I’m glad it was helpful!