History in our pockets

I used to teach an undergraduate elective that looked at modern Southeast Asia through their money. It was a popular course that sugar-coated the heavy history readings with the visuals in banknotes and coins. While one could not teach a full history of the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations from their distinct currencies, looking at the way these evolved was a lesson in historiography or the way in which history is written, expressed, and understood.

When one looks at the history of money in the Philippines, we start with barter and gold in pre-historic times. Next phase was silver that travelled from Spanish America, made a stop-over in the Philippines, and on to China during the years of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade. The galleons travelled from 1565-1815, a period that is now considered by some economic historians as the beginnings of globalization. Gold and silver were the usual medium of exchange because these precious metals were valuable in themselves—but then came the banknote. You cannot imagine how revolutionary it was for a small piece of paper, worthless in itself, to transform to stored value and be accepted for exchange in goods and services.

Banknotes have been in use in the Philippines from the 19th century to our times and just looking at the evolution over the decades and how each era produced differences in size, design, and material reflects our history from the Spanish colonial period, the still-born First Philippine Republic, the American colonial period, the Japanese Occupation, to the independent Philippines. The story and stories inside our money is told in my latest book, “Yaman: History and Heritage in Philippine Money,” published by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

I wrote the book during the pandemic lockdown, reflecting on millions of coins and banknotes issued by central banks all over the world, flowing like an endless river, changing hands on a daily basis. Money is so common that people hardly notice the details on them. Many people differentiate the denomination or value of a banknote simply by its color, or in countries that have uniform design or color on their notes, like the US, by the portraits printed on them. Wasn’t there a time when kotong cops would stop motorists and ask “Sinong abogado n’yo?” And the choice was Quezon (P20), Osmeña (P50), or Roxas (P100) depending on the gravity of the infraction whether real or imagined. I don’t know the going rate these days and whether inflation has pushed grease money to the P500 and P1,000 range. Filipinos do not like coins, they find them bulky and confusing because they come in different size, weight, color, and sometimes, texture depending on their face value at point of exchange. It seems consumers are not supposed to count small change. That’s why they are short-changed. I always stress out cashiers by demanding exact change and leave happy when I am given more than I asked for.

I have always been fascinated by the art on money and it’s a pity that Filipinos do not appreciate the effort that the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas takes to conceptualize, generate, print, mint, and issue banknotes and coins that carry the name of the country and serve, like a flag, as a marker of our identity in the global world. In the 1980s, one of my bonus questions for the finals asked the students to list down and identify all the portraits on our currency from the one centavo coin to the P500 bill. Since they were not allowed to open their wallets and merely relied on their memory very few got the complete and correct list.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, people — fearful of contamination from physical cash—shifted to plastic credit cards with a magnetic strip, to e-commerce, and online transactions with QR codes where no physical money changes hands but an economic transaction is made and completed. I am curious how much further the changes in money will go in the next decade. While I do most of my banking online, I am still partial to paper money or coins that I can hold in my hand. Much of history will be lost if people cannot recognize the iconic faces of George Washington, Queen Elizabeth II, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mao Zedong that serve to identify the countries that place them on their money — the United States of America, the United Kingdom, India, and the People’s Republic of China. Money is history in our pockets.

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