Nowadays it’s easy to exchange your local currency for foreign currency when traveling, but what was it like before this? For example, if an American travels to China in the 1700’s, how could they pay for things there? Their American money wouldn’t work in China, so was there a way to exchange money? How would that work?
That’s just an example off the top of my head, but I’m curious about any time in history, no matter how far back or where.
I posted a very general answer to this question a while back here . But I am not sure about the specifics of an American traveling to China in the 1700's. The Chinese in the 18th c. saw an immense international demand for a commodity they produced ( tea) but there was no reciprocal Chinese demand for other goods. Because merchants for the most part had to pay for tea with gold or silver, instead of two merchants in distant towns balancing their books with letters of credit back and forth, there was a steady shipment of gold and silver to China ( and when it was found that China would buy opium, traders began dumping greater and greater amounts of it into the Chinese market, eventually resulting in the Opium War in the 19th c.). How this would have affected the average American traveler I don't know. It could be that the American would simply not get a very good rate exchanging his dollars for a letter of credit to a merchant in China.