Chapter Money and its alternatives in Early Modern extractive industry: The many media of exchange in mercury mining

Abstract

«Alternatives to money» have a long history in Western extractive industry, extending to the 20th century. Before cash wages became a requirement of law, miners received their earnings in varieties of commodity and fiat moneys, combinations of scrip, cash and kind. This paper examines the use of Pfennwert, pennyworths of various goods, as a form of remuneration at the mines of the Holy Roman Empire with particular attention to the mercury mines in Idrija, Slovenia from the 15th to the 17th century. It demonstrates that this practice was a rational response to the «ecology of work»—that it, the combination of physical environment, regulatory systems, market forces, social relations and economic institutions—specific to Idrija. This approach to alternatives exposes their role not only in remuneration but in all aspects of premodern production as well as their persistence in the modern, supposedly monetary, economy.