The Word "Dollar" and the Dollar Sign $ Origins, History and Geography of Dollar Currencies
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The Word "Dollar" and the Dollar Sign $ Origins, History and Geography of Dollar Currencies See also i ic i History of money Money n f t on Financial scandals From Thalers to Dollars The history of the dollar is a story involving many countries in different continents. The word dollar is much older than the American unit of currency. It is an Anglicised form of "thaler", (pronounced taler, with a long "a"), the name given to coins first minted in 1519 from locally mined silver in Joachimsthal in Bohemia. (Today the town of Joachimsthal lies within the borders of the Czech republic and its Czech name is Jáchymov). Thaler is a shortened form of the term by which the coin was originally known - Joachimsthaler. Later on the English version of the name (dollar) was also applied to a similar coins, not only ones minted in central Europe but also the History of money Spanish peso and the Portuguese eight-real piece. Both these large from ancient times silver coins were practically identical in weight and fineness. Today we to the present day, are familiar with the phrase pieces of eight from tales of pirates in the by Glyn Davies, 3rd Caribbean. ed, University of Wales Press, 2002. Those coins, particularly the Spanish peso or dollar circulated widely in 720p. Britain's North American colonies because of a shortage of official British coins. That is why, after the United States gained its Much of the independence the new nation chose "dollar" as the name of its currency information in this instead of keeping the pound. page comes from the above- mentioned book. Later Thalers See the website for Probably the most famous thaler coins were those minted during the additional reign of Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary information about and Bohemia (1740-80). Maria Theresa thalers were in common use in the history of Aden and some other parts of the Middle East as recently as the 1960s. money. The thaler was the unit of currency in Prussia and some of the other Other printed German states until the second half of the 19th century. The unification sources were used, of Germany in 1871 and the adoption of the mark as the common particularly in currency put an end to the old units, just as the adoption of the Euro and the introduction of new notes and coins in 2002 put an end to the connection with French franc, the German Deutschemark, Italian lire, Spanish peseta, dollar sign, and are and other European currencies. mentioned below. There are also links to the most important web sources used. The Scandinavia Daler While on the subject of currency unions, before the formation of the Scandinavian Currency Union in 1873 and the adoption of the krone or krona, (the first being the Danish and Norwegian word for "Crown" and the second, the Swedish word) each of the Scandinavian countries had their own version of the "daler" as their currency. Like "dollar" the name "daler" came from "thaler" and provides a clue as to how the word evolved. (The term "daler" was also used in Low German and Dutch). In Sweden dalers were minted from 1534 onwards, and in Denmark from 1544. As Denmark and Norway formed a united kingdom until the Napoleonic Wars, when Norway passed into Swedish rule, the two countries shared a common currency. The Scandinavian Currency Union was modelled on the much larger Latin Currency Union which was inspired by France. World War I effectively put an end to the Latin Currency Union. Although Denmark, Norway and Sweden were neutral, World War I put a considerable strain on their economies too, and consequently the Scandinavian Currency Union was officially dissolved not long after, in 1924. Dollars in Shakespeare Interesting examples of the use of the word "dollar" in Britain long before the creation of the United States - in fact the English colonisation of North America had scarcely begun - can be found in two of Shakespeare's plays. Macbeth Act I, Scene 2 Rosse: "That now Sweno, the Norway's King, craves composition; Nor would we deign him burial of his men Till he disbursed at Saint Colme's Inch Ten thousand dollars to our general use." The Tempest, Act II, Scene 1 Gonzalo: "When every grief is entertain'd that's offer'd, Comes to th' entertainer - Sebastian: "A dollar." Gonzalo: "Dolour comes to him, indeed: you have spoken truer than you purpos'd." The last remark by Gonzalo was, of course, a pun since "dolour" is an old-fashioned word for pain or grief, like the modern Spanish word dolor, which also means pain. Shakespeare's use of the word "dollar" in Macbeth was anachronistic since the real Macbeth probably died in the middle of the 11th century, nearly 500 years before the first thalers were minted. Nevertheless the use of the word in Macbeth and the Tempest, both of which were first performed in about 1611, is a clear indication that the term dollar was already in use in English before the the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for America in 1620. The Aztecs, Incas and the Spanish Empire The reasons for the adoption of the dollar as the official currency of the US are bound up with events in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. Small bands of Spanish adventurers had overthrown the empires of the Aztecs and Incas, plundering their temples and razing them to the ground or converting them to cathedrals - Machu Picchu was the outstanding exception, not being "discovered" until the 20th century. In addition to the treasures they melted down, the Spanish conquerors soon began to produce large quantities of silver from mines in Mexico and Peru. Most important of all were the enormous reserves they discovered at Potosi in what is now Bolivia. Ships laden with silver regularly crossed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Those crossing the Atlantic were naturally bound for Spain. Others sailed west across the Pacific to China to trade silver for Chinese goods. As the Spaniards controlled the sources of most of the world's silver their coins were widely accepted, especially in places like Britain's American colonies where silver was in short supply. The United States Dollar During colonial times the official British coinage was in short supply and as a result the a variety of substitutes was used in Britain's American colonies, including wampum, in some of the northern colonies, and tobacco, or more conveniently, certificates for tobacco deposited in public warehouses, in Virginia. The colonists also used whatever foreign coins they could obtain. At various times in different colonies paper money was issued and disputes with the British government over this were one of the causes of the American Revolution. The rebels financed their war of independence largely by printing paper money notes that were called Continentals. By the end of the war, these had been rendered practically worthless by hyperinflation but financial prudence is a luxury in wartime. The notes had served their purpose and, with the help of their French allies, the Americans won the war. As Spanish pesos or dollars had long been in wide circulation in North America, some of the paper money issued in some of the colonies before the war had been denominated in dollars. Other notes used British monetary units. During the war too, some Continentals were denominated in British units, others in dollars. In 1792 the newly independent United States chose the dollar, subdivided into 100 cents, as the unit of American currency in preference to the British pound. Foreign coins were supposed to lose their status as legal tender within 3 years of the US coins coming into circulation. A new mint was established in Philadelphia and started its operations in 1794. The mint was the first purpose-built structure authorized by the United States government. However, because of a shortage of both gold and silver, in 1797 the government extended legal tender status to Spanish dollars for an indefinite period. The discoveries in California, which sparked off the Gold Rush in 1848, led to a massive increase in the production of gold coins by the mint, and in 1857 the United States finally removed legal tender status from all foreign coins. By then, although as necessary to the retail trade as ever, developments in banking meant that coins were just the small change of commerce. British Dollars In 1797, owing to a desperate shortage of silver coins, the Bank of England issues altered foreign coins from its reserves. Half a million pounds worth of Spanish dollars issued by King Charles IV were over-stamped with a small engraving of George III. The re-issued coins, with a value of 4 shillings and 9 pence, attracted ridicule. "Two Kings' heads and not worth a crown" was one witticism. (A 'crown' in this context meant 5 shillings, "half-a-crown", sometimes colloquially known as "half-a-dollar", being a common coin before decimalisation in 1971). A cruder, description was "the head of a fool stamped on the neck of an ass". The issue failed because over-stamping was also applied unofficially to the plentiful supplies of light or base Spanish dollars. A few years later a more successful issue of dollars was made by the Bank of England. In 1804 Matthew Boulton, the business partner of the steam engine pioneer James Watt, was employed to erase completely the existing design on full-weight Spanish coins and stamp them as Bank of England Five Shilling Dollars. Dollars in the British Empire and Commonwealth Canada A great deal of the trade of Canada was with the United States and as a result pressure grew for a switch of currency from the pound sterling to a decimal system similar to the American one.