Imperial Credits: What Does R.O.W.E. Stand For?
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Reedemable Only Within Empire: The Imperialisation of the Currency and Palpatine's New Economic Order
As the Empire extended its power across the galaxy, it took control of the monetary system and secured carte blanche oversight of finance, trade, and capital. It replaced the old credit currency with a new kind of credit ingot marked with the Aurebesh legend 'R.O.W.E.' — 'Redeemable Only Within Empire'.
This legend became a banner that came to symbolise the political aspirations of the Empire and its tightening grip on the galaxy.
The new Imperial credit was part of a broad programme of economic and political restructuring intended to project strength and authority above all else, promising prosperity and security in return for submission. As part of this programme, the R.O.W.E. was advanced as the face of new sovereign wealth funds that would be used to rebuild the military and civil infrastructure destroyed in the course of the Clone Wars. Production was carried out at facilities on Muunilinst and Aargau, which minted the ROWE in quantities of bronzium, argentium and aurodium, and rapidly distributed them to Imperial payroll vaults across the galaxy.
These funds, it was stressed, were under the direct control of Imperial governors tasked with rebuilding the Republic in the image of Palpatine's new Empire, rather than the self-interested bureaucrats of the old regime. The R.O.W.E. was money that would be seen to be made, issued and spent within the Empire, rather than vanishing into the vaults of the Banking Clan or the coffers of Core financiers.
New executive boards like the Imperial Office for Works and Enterprise were created by mandates using the emergency powers granted to the Chancellor during the Clone Wars — powers extended indefinitely under the pretext of an ongoing security threat from separatists and seditionists. Bypassing the oversight of the Imperial Senate, they placed economic authority in the hands of the military. Financial instruments like the famous All Planets Relief Fund, intended for emergency aid and sapientarian relief during the war, were regularised as part of the Imperial bureaucracy. They also became repositories for wealth stripped and looted first from Separatist worlds defeated in the Clone Wars, and afterwards from any worlds which the regime succeeded in labelling as collaborators or sympathisers harbouring seditionist elements — a slush fund for the militarisation of the Empire's body politic.
While the Empire's politburo promised a grand and newly efficient economic order, the reality was very different for the citizenry. Imperialisation involved not just replacement but revaluation of the currency. Though it was announced as a phased programme that would take effect gradually, many Imperial governors used their authority to unilaterally devalue the old Republic currency overnight, while banning the use or even exchange of local and off-planet currencies. This was done before currency exchanges had occurred or were even available, effectively making many citizens and businesses bankrupt overnight.
The mandatory use of Imperial credits also dissolved a centuries-long multicultural monetary policy which had seen free exchange and conversion between Republic credits and local currencies, alongside parallel systems of barter and exchange that had operated in symbiosis.
On many planets there were structural and class differences between the kinds of money in use, with poorer sections of planetary populations dealing in local tender while businesses and cosmopolitan sectors used the galactic standard. With local tender now effectively outlawed, entire populations found their money was worthless.
Currency devaluation became a tool by which the Empire waged effective economic war on its own population, impoverishing the citizenry and then sweeping in to seize control of planetary economies in an aggressive campaign of federalisation. Bureaus like the Office of Works and Enterprise, which drew on the new credit funds, now also became the de facto operators of Imperial workfare programmes that turned swathes of bankrupt citizens into indentured servants of the state.
When the currency did enter circulation, the propaganda and fanfare that accompanied it pushed the idea that the R.O.W.E. ultimately belonged not to the individual but to the state. Indentured workers paid with the R.O.W.E. were pushed to spend their wages at branches of the Imperial Supply Office, which ran open tabs factoring in the cost of their lodging and maintenance, trapping them in extended cycles of debt. Local service industries were pressured to give privileges and discounts to Imperial service personnel who spent the R.O.W.E. at their businesses, despite struggling to exchange the coins in the local economy.
A powerful example of this mentality, and the messaging that pushed it, was the 'Pay Them What We Owe Them' campaign. Created to promote the acceptance of the R.O.W.E., these posters played on a common misconception in some quarters that the Resh character in R.O.W.E. was a credit sign in front of the word 'owe' — an idea some Imperial political officers found it useful to propagate, with some foundries even minting coins that turned this into a reality. The posters lauded the Imperial service at the same time as being loaded with an implied threat, reminding the citizenry that any safety and security they enjoyed they 'owed' to the military.
On top of this, the new Imperial credits directly devalued citizens' savings. Credit revaluation was carried out using opaque formulas created by the Imperial Banking Commission, often loaded with additional fees, taxes and levies applied retroactively to a citizen's income and savings. These formulas, which changed from system to system, were much more punishing to the lower economic strata of the Empire, and softer or more negotiable for the rich — though still far from pain-free compared to the old Republican regime. Imperialisation of the currency was a process that historians would later call a great economic and social injustice. Most citizens of the time simply called it brute robbery.
For this reason, reactions to the Imperial Credit became a powerful litmus of an individual's relationship to Imperial power. The R.O.W.E. was feted as a symbol of power and unity by the regime, fawned over by its loyalists and beneficiaries, and a focal point of resentment for its victims.
DEFACEMENT OF IMPERIAL CREDITS
Little wonder that defacing the currency became a quotidian act of political resistance. A melted, marked or otherwise damaged Imperial ingot, worn on a leather thong or chain, was a popular accessory for anybody who had cause to broadcast disdain for Imperial authority. It quickly became another in a long list of pretexts used by Imperial Security for stopping, detaining and prosecuting suspects under petty treason charges. More than one back-alley blaster fight with Imperial troopers cited such an accoutrement as the inciting offence in the after-action report.
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