Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
by
Francis Turner
"There are two fundamental causes of madness amongst students: sexual frustration and
the study of coinage."
Professor Karl Helleiner, quoting what is purportedly an old Austrian proverb
In 1632 Europe was filled with coins of varying values, issued by governments of
varying degrees of trustworthiness. To make it worse each system had different
ratios of the numbers of coins of one denomination that made up the next. About
the only sure thing was that no one used a decimal system. For a modern reader
all this is compounded by the changes in the relative costs of different things.
Together it means that it is very hard to work out how much Grantville things
should be sold for downtime and how much uptimers should expect to pay for
things made by downtimers. This article is an attempt to shine some light on the
issue but I would be the first to admit it does little more than outline the
problem.
National Currencies
Money in the 17th century was primarily based on silver coins with gold used for
larger transactions and smaller coins minted from copper, brass or tin. One of the
reasons why there was considerable inflation in the 16th century was the vast
influx of gold and silver from the Spanish looting of the new world. To add to
this the rough ratio of gold:silver by weight gradually changed. In the medieval
period the ratio was approximately 12:1 (i.e one unit of gold was worth 12 units
of silver) but thanks to the vast discoveries of Latin American silver this ratio
increased so that by the time Sir Isaac Newton was in charge of the Royal Mint in
1717 it was over 15:1. Needless to say this caused significant dislocation as
cunning traders were able to take advantage of the mismatch in pricing but
fortunately for 17th century Europeans the majority of this dislocation had
occurred during the previous century and the ratio of ~15:1 was more or less
fixed. However the disruptions to trade of the 30 years war meant that in
different places the relative abundance of gold and silver as well as copper and
other metals often varied thus altering the price and in some cases the value of
the coins used. There were times when older coins especially were melted down
to retrieve their metal as the metal was more valuable than the face value of the
coin.
To step back a bit: in medieval Europe the standard silver penny was defined as
being 1/240th of a pound of silver (by weight) and the soldus/shilling/sou was
the weight of 12 pennies. This ratio was first applied by Charlemagne and was
common across much of early 2nd millennium Europe. In England the familiar
1:12:240 ratio was made official by Henry II in 1158 who also defined the weight
and purity of the penny and it lasted until 1971. Initially most realms only
minted pennies or very small multiples of a penny (such as the English groat
worth 4 pennies) however due to inflation, debasement of the coinage and so on
the pound weight, penny based currencies gradually added additional coins and
in different realms their values changed even though the ratios usually remained
constant. This meant that an Englishman used to Shillings and Pence (20
Shillings to a pound, 12 pence to a shilling) would find it easy when he traveled
to other places with the same ratios such as France (20 sou to a livre, 12 denier to
a sou) or Italy (1 Lire = 20 Soldi or 240 Denari) but not so easy elsewhere.
Although the pound (livre, lire etc.) and shilling(soldus,sou) were defined and
used as a unit of account, for a long while there were no shilling or pound coins.
However this did not stop kings, princes and other rulers issuing coins with
names like "crown" or "angel", which had a value of some number of pennies or
shillings (or their equivalent) but generally a different number in different places.
These coins added to the confusion since they would be referred to in casual
usage ("I lost 3 crowns at cards last night"), but would not be used in bills or
accounts which stuck with three columns: L (pounds/livre/lire),
s(shillings,sous,soldi) and d(pence, denari). Another unit of account which, in
medieval times, was rarely if ever a coin was the mark. Unfortunately despite the
general agreement about the theoretical weight of the penny, the number pennies
to a mark varied being 144 in some parts of Germany, 160 in Britain and either
192 or 384 in Scandinavia.
Money of Account
Because of the gradual debasement and change of the actual coins used for every
day transactions accounting was frequently done using some nominal coin.
These nominal coins typically had known properties (e.g. 240x1.555g of sterling
silver (92.5% pure) or 3.55g of 24 carat gold). As and when a ruler kindly debased
his coinage by 20% merchants simply ignored the change in their internal
accounts and just required 20% more from those paying in the new coin (and to
other merchants at least they would also pay out 20% more). Most money of
account was based on a silver measure - in French influenced Europe typically
the livre de gros tournois: 970.56 grams of pure silver or 1012.76g of 23/24 pure
silver - though some used a gold measure such as the Venetian ducat or the 1337
French écu à la chaise. In some cases (e.g. the Venetian Ducat) the reference coin
remained current as well, in other cases (such as the gros tournois) it didn't.
Money of Account was most often used in places where currency was frequently
debased and/or where it changed radically as one ruler conquered another, more
stable countries such as England typically did not use it. England and English
merchants generally used the accounting measure we use today based on the
actual coin (pound, dollar, penny) although during the wars of the roses and the
early Tudor period this was not the case. In much of Germany the unit of account
was based on either the gold Rhenish florin or the silver Reichsthaler which was
generally considered to be worth 1.5 Rhenish florins.
International Currencies
In addition to the mish mash of national currencies, there were two international
currencies, a gold one and a silver one with a fairly well defined rate of exchange
between them. These were struck to a generally consistent weight by numerous
states and coins from different states were thus generally interchangeable. The
gold coin was the Venetian ducat, introduced in 1284, contained just over 3.5
grams of gold and was the first international coin. It was so successful that it was
minted under different names by many European nations. In northern Europe it
was called the Guilder or Gulden and it had a variety of other names such as the
Florentine or Rhenish Florin, the Forint (Hungary) or the Scudo (Milan). The
silver one was the Thaler (tallero, dollar, daler etc.) which was (supposed to be) a
fixed weight of silver and was the equivalent in value to two of the golden
ducats. The name thaler (from thal, "valley") originally came from the coins
minted from the silver from a rich mine at Joachimsthal (St. Joachim's Valley,
Czech: Jáchymov) in Bohemia, then part of the Habsburg Empire. It was also the
equivalent of the Spanish peso ("heavy"), also known as the piece of eight
because it was worth 8 reales, which was a silver coin minted by Spain since
1497.
The 2 gulden to a thaler rule was usually correct but both the gulden and the
thaler of the time suffered from clipping and debasement so actual physical coins
had to be weighed and ones with an unusual design would need to be assayed to
check for lack of debasement. The amount of pure silver in a thaler was
approximately an ounce (28 grams) but varied between 25 and 30 grams. For
example the Swedish Riksdaler was 25.5 grams, whereas pesos nominally
contained 27 grams. If it were that simple we could relax, but to make things
worse countries also introduced thaler-like coins (some of which were called an
something thaler) of varying weights. For example the Dutch had various
daalders including the Rijksdaalder (Rix dollar) and the Leeuwendaalder (Lion
dollar). The Lion dollar had 27.7g of silver was the equivalent of 40 stuiver/2
guilders, whereas the Rix dollar was 25% bigger (50 stuiver or 2.5 guilders).
However since the lion dollar was the equivalent of the peso etc etc it was thus
was more popular than the rix dollar or the other ones.
The English used the term mark to refer to two thirds of a pound (i.e. 160d or 13s
4d). There was no mark coin but some things were priced in marks, just as today
some things are still priced in guineas. Common coins were the angel (10s) the
crown (5s) in gold; the half crown (2s 6d), the shilling, the groat (4d) and the
penny in silver; and the copper farthing (1/4d). There was also the golden unite
(20s) and the silver sixpence, threepence, the ha'penny and half-groat or
tuppence.
Spain
Spain had a completely different currency system; consisting of maravedis, reals
and pesos. There were 34 maravedis to a real and 8 reals to a peso. Fortunately
the peso was equivalent to the thaler and thus it was easy to convert other values.
A real was worth 6 English pence or 5 Dutch stuivers. Spain had suffered
sufficient inflation that previously valuable coins such as the maravedi or the
blanca were now essentially worthless. The real was divided into quarters (a coin
called a quartillo) and the smallest coin was 2 maravedi (a 17th of a real). Other
coins included escudos (=2 peso) and dubloons(=16 peso).
Italy
The Italian states had the standard Ducat (Venice) or Florin (Florence) as well as
a system similar to the English and French one of 1 Lire = 20 Soldi, 60 Quattrini
or 240 Denari. The problem was relating the Lira to the Ducat as a Lira was
frequently debased (and hence so were soldi and denari) and thus a rather
indeterminate thing. Typically in the 1630s there were about 6-7 lire to a Ducat or
Florin. In Venice there was a fixed exchange of 6L 4s to a ducat but this only
applied to Venetian lire.
Sweden
Sweden had the solid riksdaler as well as marks, öre, örtugar and penningar,
with 1 mark = 8 öre = 24 örtugar = 192 penningar (usually). Although the
Riksdaler remained constant (at 2 guilders or 1 peso) it was only used for
external trade and the conversion between it and the more normal copper marks
and öre used for internal trade varied after 1620. In 1604 a riksdaler was 4 marks
(4 mark = 32 öre), but it steadily increased in value afer 1620. In 1632 I estimate
that a riksdaler was worth about 2 copper dalar (i.e. 8 marks or 64 öre). To add to
the confusion in the past in different parts of Sweden the ratio between marks
and penningar varied: in Götaland a mark was worth 384 penningar, double the
usual 192. This was supposed to be outdated but there is some evidence that the
384 ratio was still used by some people.
Poland
Polish controlled areas, that is to say Poland, Lithuania and parts of Prussia, used
the zloty as follows: 1 zloty = 30 grosz = 90 Szelags = 540 Denars. Nominally the
grosz was the same as the Bohemian groschen (24 to a thaler) and thus a Zloty
should be the equivalent of the Dutch Rix Dollar. I do not believe it really was the
same in the 1630s as Poland was as busy as its neighbours in debasing its
currency, in fact there is evidence that there were 3 zloty to a thaler in the 1630s.
It is unclear whether this thaler was the standard 2 guilder one, the 2½ guilder
one or the german Reichstaler which was worth 1½ guilders.
France
The French currency was both impure being generally made of "billon", an alloy
of copper and silver, and highly inflationary. France had Livres, Sous and
(theoretically) Deniers although the smallest coin was the copper gros (4 denier)
and also had the Ecu worth 3 livres. A French livre was worth approximately the
same as a guilder in the early 1630s but the actual amount decreased steadily
over time. English sources report that in 1625 a quarter écu (3/4 livre) was worth
1s 7½d implying that 1 livre was 2 Shillings and 2 Pence but in 1645 1 Livre
bought just 1 Shilling and 6½ Pence and in 1653 1 Livre was equal to 1 Shilling
and 3 Pence.
Denmark
Traditionally Denmark had marks, skillings and penninge with 16 skillings to a
mark and 12 penninge to a skilling. This made the mark the same as the Svealand
swedish mark (192 penningar = 1 mark). Danish coins were notorious for their
lack of silver, and steadily decreased in value compared to their German
neighbours during the 16th century. Given that the German coins were also
getting worse this was quite a feat. However a decree of May 4, 1625 brought to
an end an unsettled period in Danish monetary history and fixed the ratio of the
rigsdaler to the mark and skilling: 1 rigsdalar was to equal 6 marks or 96
skillings. A Rigsdaler was the same as a Dutch lion dollar, that is to say 2
guilders.
Danish coins included the Rigsdaler or 6 mark coin, the crown (4 marks), the
mark coin and coins for 1,2,4 and 8 skillings
Summary table
Country Currency Value in
Guilders
Holland 1 Guilder = 20 Stuiver = 320 Penning N/A
1 Leeuwendaalder = 2 Guilder
1 Rijksdaalder = 2.5 Guilder
Venice 1 Ducat = 6L4s 1 Ducat = 1
Guilder
1 Lire = 20 Soldi, 60 Quattrini or 240 Denari
Italy As with Venice but the Lire/Ducat rate varied 1 Ducat = 1
Guilder
Spain 34 Maravedi = 1 Real, 8 Real = 1 Peso 1 Peso = 2
Guilders
France 1/3rd Ecu = 1 Livre = 20 sous = 240 Denier 1
Livre ~= 1 Guilder
England 1 pound = 20 Shillings = 240 pence 2
Shillings = 1 Guilder
Scotland As England 24 Scots
Shillings = 1 Guilder
Denmark 1 rigsdalar = 6 marks = 96 skillings 1
Rigsdaler = 2 Guilders
Sweden 1 mark = 8 öre = 24 örtugar = 192 penningar 1 Riksdaler =
2 Guilders
1 riksdaler =~8 marks (variable)
Poland 1 zloty = 30 grosz = 90 Szelags = 540 Denars 1 Zloty = 2/3
Guilder (?)
Turkey One Kurush/Piastre = 40 Para = 120 Akche 200 Akche =
1 Guilder (in 1584)
Bohemia 1 thaler = 24 groschen = 72 kreuzer = 288 pfennig 1
Thaler = 2 Guilders
Germany 1 gulden = 4 mark = 24 albus = 48 schilling = 288 heller 1 Gulden = 1
Guilder
Also 1 groschen = 3 kreuzer = 24 pfennig = 48 heller
many other coins. Unit of account the Reichsthaler 1
Reichsthaler = 1½ Guilders
Trade and debts between neighbours were quite often settled by barter, this
included rents which could be a proportion of the harvest crop. This was a
holdover of the feudal tithing regime but it was used because, despite the influx
of South American silver, coins were still comparatively rare. Agricultural rents,
when they were paid in coin to an absentee landlord, were of the order of a
guilder/acre/year, less for pasture and more for arable land and often much more
for prime meadows or orchards.
Sources
Google was invaluable during the cration of this document. However I found a
lot of mutually incompatible documents so google on its own will lead to
problems. The following seem to be correct and were mined for most of the
above:
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/MONEYLEC.htm
http://www.algonet.se/~hogman/slmynt_eng.htm
http://www.portsdown.demon.co.uk/coin.htm and
http://www.portsdown.demon.co.uk/mark.htm
http://www.helmer-c.dk/Econhist/dk-money.htm
http://home.golden.net/~medals/staremoneta.html
http://www.anythinganywhere.com/info/a2z.htm and especially
http://www.anythinganywhere.com/info/a2z/azgermany.htm
http://users.crocker.com/~jcamp/coins.html