What seems to have been done when some ‘state’ conquered a population, taxes were demanded and soldiers payed for food and products from conquered populations with the money that would be accepted for the taxes by the conquering state. This originated with Alexandrian conquests. It was a more manageable way to dominate a new area rather than to enslave the population in forced labour.
I think viewing money as initially debt establishes its origins as coercian. You immediately put a community of people ‘under water’ by making them pay taxes and mandating your currency. In some sense, this leads to an efficient economy, but it’s almost this intuition of ‘known coercion’ that leads people to outrage when this system is manipulated to other interests than that of the wider society.
After the fall of Rome, money was non-operational. The political and social systems to establish a unit account did not arrive again until Charlemagne and latin Christiendom imposed a money of account. p.110.
I’m struggling to find a base of an explanatory theory here wrt to the commodity vs chartalist theories.