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What Is the Exchange Rate between Cattle and Cocoa Beans?
With Oathbreaker in the capable hands of my beta team, I’ve been doing a bit of worldbuilding for another project that’s kicking around in my head.
Unlike the cashless society of the Wonder, I’ve been pondering a world that uses some sort of commodity currency as a medium of exchange. In the process, I’ve found a few interesting options. Here are some random notes about three of them.
Irish Cattle
The Irish used cattle as a unit of exchange up until the fourteenth century. Specifically, the milk cow was universally recognized measure of worth. There were even ways to achieve fractions of that value without killing the cow. In medieval Ireland,
1 pregnant cow = 2/3 of a milk cow
1 three-year old heifer = 1/2 of a milk cow
1 two-year old heifer = 1/3 of a milk cow
1 one-year old heifer = 1/4 of a milk cow
1 one-year old bullock = 1/8 of a milk cow
Worth in milk cows could also be expressed in terms of other currencies such as “ounces” of some precious metal (usually silver), cumhala or “bondwomen” (i.e., female slaves), or séti or “jewels.” The sét seems to have been an ideal or an abstraction in Irish law, and it is not clear that transactions were ever literally conducted by the transfer of female slaves from one person to another. Still, everyone had a clear idea of what these things were worth and conducted their business accordingly.
Unfortunately, this system persisted for so long that the law codes prescribed different rates of exchange in different eras and in different regions of Ireland. A cumhal might be the same value as a milk cow or it might be two or three times as much. One source gives the value of a cumhal as two séti, another says six to seven, and yet another says up to forty.
Since 240 English pence were struck from a pound of silver, we can assume that an ounce of silver would be worth about 15 pence. At a rate of 1 milk cow = 9 ounces of silver, the price of a milk cow in silver would be about 135 pence, which is in line with some of the early medieval prices I’ve been able to find online—and, incidentally, very close to the price of 131.5 pence given for a female slave in this era.
Mexican Cocoa Beans
When the Spanish arrived in Mexico, they found a society in which cocoa beans were an accepted medium of exchange. Some of the customary prices I’ve found are:
a large tomato for 1 cocoa bean
a small rabbit for 30 cocoa beans
a female turkey for 100 cocoa beans
a male turkey for 300 cocoa beans
a copper hatchet for 8,000 cocoa beans
The Spanish adapted this system in dealing with the Aztecs. In fact, cultivation of cocoa beans was restricted in the 1700s in order to maintain their value as money.
By a royal decree of 1555, the value of one cocoa bean was set at 1/140 of a Spanish real. In 1587, this was dropped to 1/150 of a real. Since a peso or “piece of eight” was worth eight reales, we could also say that 1,200 cocoa beans = 1 peso. In the mid-sixteenth century, pesos traded in England at about 54 pence. Once again, that makes the commodity prices reasonable when compared to equivalent items in the same time frame.
Canadian Beaver Pelts
The Hudson Bay Company in Canada was a key player in the North American fur trade. Not only did their stores buy furs brought in by traders, they accepted furs as currency. The above linked article even provides a price list for the York factory in units of “made beaver” (i.e., a prime beaver pelt). Here is a selection of prices:
a hatchet for 1 beaver pelt
a pound of tobacco for 2 beaver pelts
a pair of shoes for 3 beaver pelts
a hat for 4 beaver pelts
a pistol for 7 beaver pelts
a long gun for 14 beaver pelts
In 1740, the Hudson Bay Company bought beaver pelts for about 7.88 shillings apiece (about 94.5 pence). But assessing the exchange rate isn’t that simple. In fact, the Company store customarily marked up their prices by about 50%. That means your 94.5 pence worth of beaver pelt would only buy you goods that cost 63 pence in silver at a different establishment.
And no, I have no intentions of writing a protagonist who works as a bank teller or a merchant at a company store! But I find that little touches like these add a depth of detail that can really make a setting seem real.
Plus, I’ve learned a few things along the way, and no new knowledge is ever a waste of time.
Creeping Back into the Blogosphere
2017 has gotten off to a very rough start. It’s not all bad, but it started very badly with the death of my mother after an illness that had her hospitalized since just after New Year’s day. Around that time, the house we’d been trying to get out of so we could move in with my parents and take better care of them finally sold after about five years on the market. Timing, right? We finally closed last week, and still have loads and loads of boxes to unpack.
Along the way, I actually managed to finish the first draft of Oathbreaker, the fifth and final installment of Into the Wonder. We’ll finally see what Taylor has to do to satisfy her debt of honor to Mara Hellebore. (Hint: It won’t be anything Taylor would have chosen for herself!) And, with any luck, everybody—well, most everybody—will get their happy ending. Oathbreaker is now in the able hands of Team Beta, and I look forward to getting some good constructive feedback from them throughout the spring and early summer.
All this to say, I’ll soon be taking the blog off autopilot and putting up some new content. Look for an upcoming series on the “monstrous races” discussed in Pliny’s Natural History, with particular emphasis on how early explorers placed many of these bizarre not-quite-humans in the Americas.
So, thanks for your patience and for the “likes” on my Sunday Inspiration posts. More folkloric goodness will soon be on its way!
How the Romans Helped Invent Judaism
Next week, I’ll once again explain to my New Testament students that all of first-century Judaism was thoroughly Hellenized, even among those who despised Greco-Roman culture. This article by Burton L. Visotzky at The Bible and Interpretation outlines some of what I’ll be talking about.
To summarize thus far: vocabulary, institutions, hermeneutics and exegesis, rhetoric, law, philosophy, art, and architecture were all adapted from the broader Greco-Roman world in the service of reshaping Judaism to become a viable religious force following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE.
The River of Night Is Now Available!
The River of Night is now available in paperback via Amazon.com. Look for the Kindle edition to appear shortly.
For those of you keeping score, the fifth and final novel, Oathbreaker, will be coming some time next year.
August 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival
The Monday Morning Theologian has the honors this month. So go over to J. K. Turner’s blog for all the best of biblioblogging for the month of August.
Scooby Doo is Fun TV but a Lousy Worldview
Over at JesusCreed, Jonathan Storment has written an intriguing review of Reviving Old Scratch by Richard Beck. This is a book about spiritual warfare—but Storment urges us not to roll our eyes just yet.
I want you to know this isn’t like the other spiritual warfare books out there. It is written specifically for the kinds of Christians who stopped believing in the Devil/Demons a long time ago, by someone who went down that same road.
The best way I could summarize Beck’s work is that he quotes the Canadian Philosopher Charles Taylor, lots of Scripture, lots of theologians, and talks often about Scooby Doo.
After providing some necessary philosophical background based on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, Storment sums up Beck’s train of thought with these words:
…Scooby Doo is a perfect example of what it looks like to live in a disenchanted age. Think about every Scooby Doo episode you’ve ever seen. It starts out with an enchanted world. They’re in some haunted mansion, chasing down a ghost or goblin of some kind. All of them are terrified because they are vulnerable to the spiritual forces of the universe and at some point Shaggy runs away screaming and Scooby says “ruhroh.”
But then the turn comes. And the ghost trips over some chair or accidentally overplays its hand, and these detective kids suddenly realize that this isn’t a ghost at all.
Then there is the great unmasking, where they pull back the disguise and sure enough…there are no demons in the world, this is just Old Mr. Dickerson, the greedy banker trying to get rich.
Beck says
When the downward pressure of skepticism win and the enchanted world is emptied out, all that is left is the flat, horizontal drama of human action and interaction. This is the trajectory of a Scooby-Doo episode, the journey to discover that, in the end, there are no ghosts or gods or devils. In the final analysis, at the end of the thirty-minute adventure, there are only human beings.
Which sounds fine to a lot of progressive Christians. We really want to focus on human beings, we want Christianity to be good for human beings, we love humanity…until we don’t.
And here is Beck’s sweet spot, because I know him well, I really appreciated this section, because I’ve seen him live it out. What happens when progressive, disenchanted Christians try to follow Jesus into the messy places of the world without a robust theology of Spiritual warfare?
The battle becomes precisely against flesh and blood.
Sound Exegesis: It Does The Body Good
No purportedly biblical position on any issue is served by sloppy exegesis. Especially when the exegete implies, or downright states, that the possible interpretation he or she proposes is, in fact, the only possible interpretation.
Thus, I commend to you Ian Paul’s “Did Jesus Heal the Centurion’s Gay Lover?” (Spoiler: Maybe, but even if he did, it doesn’t mean what some people want it to mean.)
On the Importance of Nailing the Landing
I’ve recently read a number of free or bargain-priced Kindle books that should have been right up my alley: They featured heaping spoonfuls of magic, mythological creatures, compelling world-building, mystery, and rip-roaring adventure. But they all had the same problem. They were all the first volume of a multi-book series, and it showed.
To be honest, I like series, and some of my favorite fantasy authors do them exceptionally well (I’m looking at you, Rick Riordan, Benedict Jacka, and Jim Butcher). If the characters are interesting and draw me into their world, I’ll be all over that stuff. But I still want each book of the series to have its own proper conclusion. I want a clear sense of development, that the protagonist has not only left Point A, but that he or she has arrived conclusively at Point B.
I wrote Children of Pride (Into the Wonder, book 1) as a standalone novel. I had an idea of where sequels might go, but I wanted the story to hold together on its own, and my sense is that it does. The Devil’s Due (book 2) has a pretty strong sequel hook. You know more adventures are coming, but the story itself still has a fitting conclusion. The same is true for Oak, Ash, and Thorn (book 3). The River of Night (book 4) is still in production. I think readers will like the conclusion, but the less I say about that right now, the better! 😉
So, I want good stories that stand on their own two feet, but I’m still a big fan of sequel hooks. If you want to throw me hints about a bigger, more dangerous world looming on the horizon, knock yourself out. I can even deal with a well-written cliffhanger. (I prefer not at the end of book 1; your mileage may vary.)
To be bluntly to the point, if I don’t know that you can bring your novel to a fitting conclusion, how can I trust you to do it with a series? Please end your novel and don’t just stop when you’ve reached the desired word-count. Give me a sense of resolution, a sense that the protagonist has achieved the goal he or she set out to achieve, and experienced a little character development along the way.
Do that well, and I’ll gladly read book 2. I promise.
What Is the Gospel?
Here is a “TED-style talk” by Michael Bird on recognizing the true gospel.
Some Random Observations on “History of Magic in North America”
This past week, J. K. Rowling has sketched out a “History of Magic in North America” in four brief daily installments. As you may have heard, Native Americans have expressed disapproval at how their culture is depicted especially in the first of these snippets. (Yes, I’m quite aware Native Americans represent more than one culture; that’s part of the problem.) Others have found these essays wanting for other reasons. Though I am unwilling to call it a “travesty from start to finish,” I do believe it is a disappointing effort. Given the nature of this blog, I thought I owed it to my readers to share a few random observations on the matter.
1. J. K. Rowling Is Not the Devil
On the contrary, she strikes me as a considerate and thoughtful person. She has certainly inspired many, both through her personal story and the stories she has written for the world. My daughter is a great Harry Potter fan—as am I. I will continue to enjoy Harry Potter, and I look forward to seeing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them, though I will admit that “History of Magic in North America” has caused me some misgivings about how this latest project will shape up…
2. J. K. Rowling Doesn’t Seem to “Get” America
I’m sure she has visited the States on many occasions. She probably has American friends. But her account of wizarding history in North America strikes me as somewhat tone deaf. As but one example, Rowling makes Puritanism and the Salem witch trials of 1692 a benchmark for all of wizarding North America with hardly a thought to the facts that (1) other colonies had different religious sensibilities and were founded purely in the interests of economic gain and (2) England, Scotland, and other parts of Europe were undergoing their own bouts of witch hysteria in this same era.
I understand this is most likely done to set up the plot of the Fantastic Beasts movie, but it strikes me as presenting a “theme-park” version of American history. One of the things I enjoy about Harry Potter is how British wizarding culture builds upon, parallels, and even satirizes British Muggle culture. For instance, even as a non-Brit, I know a bit about “A-Levels” in the British education system and can chuckle at their corresponding wizarding “OWLs.” It looks to me like Rowling has written the history of wizarding America in such a way that these parallels are not likely to exist, which is likely to diminish my enjoyment of Fantastic Beasts.
3. America’s History of Racial Violence Should Be Handled with Great Care
I’m not going to say Native American beliefs and folklore concerning magic, fantastic beasts, and so forth are off limits for fantasy writers. Nor, for that matter, should be the mythology of West Africans brought to North America as slaves. To be honest, leaving these elements out strikes me as more colonialistic than including them. Writing off black, Native American, or other non-white contributions to American life and culture leaves a story at best only half-told.
The challenge, especially for someone of European descent (something Ms. Rowling and I have in common), is to listen to these other cultures and go the second mile in attempting to depict them with dignity and integrity. Lumping all Native Americans together in one monolithic culture doesn’t do that. Neither do references to Native American medicine men as charlatans who only “fake” having supernatural powers. Nor do comments about Native Americans excelling at animal and plant-based magic, especially when paired with the observation that Europeans introduced the wand to North America. To me, this sounds like Native American wizards have plenty of raw power, but need the refinement and sophistication provided by European wand technology. I hope I don’t have to go into why that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
4. Fanfic Might Have Fixed Some of This
Disclaimer #1: At least 90% of all fan fiction is crap.
Disclaimer #2: I have written my fair share of Harry Potter fan fiction.
But here’s the thing. Lots of Americans have wanted an American version of Harry Potter’s wizarding world for years, and some of them have wanted it enough to write their own. There is even a community at fanfiction.net for Potter stories set in America. Some of these spin out entirely new characters and settings in a world that is clearly the same as the one inhabited by Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the rest. Some of them send familiar characters across the Atlantic for new adventures in the States.
What makes even bad America in the Potterverse fanfic worthwhile is that it is all written by Americans. This means that even unimaginative, half-cocked stories depict an authentically American vision of what Magic in North America might be like.
I’m not saying Ms. Rowling should have done her research at fanfiction.net! (Heaven forfend!) I am suggesting, however, that it would not have been too difficult for her to have found some thoughtful American fans to take “History of Magic in North America” for a test drive and point out aspects that didn’t quite ring true.
Darrell J. Pursiful 