In the Introduction to this book, first published in English in 2010, I wrote: “The idea of sound money was present from the very beginning of modern monetary theory in the works of the sixteenth-century Spanish Scholastics….” Recent research has shown that the seeds of the theory of sound money were already present in Chinese writings centuries before the Scholastics.1 China was one of the first countries to develop a metallic money that was valued and exchanged by weight. Evidence suggests that this monetary regime originated during the Shang Dynasty (1766–1122 B.C.) or the Zhou Dynasty (1122–221 B.C.). China was ... (full story)