CHINA LIAO Dynasty 1 cash 1074-82 AD DA KANG TONG BAO

DescriptionLiao coins were generally crude and are usually found heavily used.The Liao were a dynasty of Turkic Khitans in Manchuria and parts of Mongolia and Hubei and Shaanxi. They raided the Song territories. Song response was to pay tribute. The Liao took the Chinese money and bought Chinese pleasures, lost their edge. Another set of hungry nomads knocked them off and established the Jin Dynasty.This category is non-Chinese northern and western kingdoms, including Liao (Khitan Turks), Jin (Jurched) who conquered northern China, Xi (Western) Xia (Tangut, their civil administration had some proto-Marxist characteristics, and the Mongols before Chingis Khan. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty in China, built by war, mishandled peacetime and broke up in the face of native rebellion.The oldest Chinese coins are at least as old as the earliest Greek coins. The Chinese coinage system differed from other systems in two ways. It was monometallic, only bronze coins circulated in general commerce. Gold and silver were treated as commodities. And the manufacturing method was by casting in moulds rather than by striking heated solid planchets. The main reference I use in attributing and describing these coins is the book: Chinese Cast Coins, by David Hartill.