Usury
The first idea to charge interest seems to come from
people lending each other cows. If you let
somebody else take care of your cows for a year, in the spring when
he returns them there will be a lot of new baby calves, that were born
during that year. Who gets to keep those new calves, you or him? The
fair thing seems to be that you get some of the new calves, and he keeps
some. The new calves you take are your interest, and in fact the word
for interest in both Sumerian
and Greek is the same
as the word for "calf".
Code of Hammurabi
We know that people have been making loans at interest
at least since about 1800 BC, because the Babylonian
code of Hammurabi forbids charging too much interest. Probably around
600 BC, the Jewish books
of Exodus and Deuteronomy spoke out against charging excessive interest
to the poor.
During the Roman
Empire, and in Han China,
most people didn't worry too much about usury except to try to control
the rates. But after the fall of
Rome people did less trading and usury became unpopular all over
West Asia and Europe. In the Islamic
empire, usury was forbidden. The Koran
said:
Believers, do not live on usury, doubling your wealth
many times over. [The 'Imrans 3:130]
and
Those that live in usury shall rise up before God like men whom Satan has demented by his touch; for they claim that trading is no different from usury."[The Cow 2:275]
Bankers in Genoa, Italy (De Septem Vitis, from the 1300's)
To find out more about usury, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your local library:
Eyewitness: Money, by Joe Cribb (2000). Not the best in the series,but still a good introduction to exchange systems for kids.
An Annotated Bibliography on the History of Usury and Interest from the Earliest Times Through the Eighteenth Century, by John Houkes (2004). Lists other books about usury, and explains what they're about.
Teachings on Usury in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by Susan Buckley (2000)
Money
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Teachers' guides for
the economy
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