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The piece of eight had the same intrinsic value as the thaler and by the end of the 17th century it too was being called dollar (and was so designated in Jamaican monetary legislation of 1738). By the mid 18th century the piece of eight was commonly known in British North America as the Spanish dollar.
The coins circulated throughout Spain's colonies and beyond, with the eight-real piece, known in English as the Spanish dollar, becoming an international standard and spawning, among other currencies, the United States dollar. A reform in 1737 set the silver real at two and half billon reales (reales de vellón) or eighty-five maravedís.
The silver 8-real coin was known as the Spanish dollar (as the coin was minted to the specifications of the thaler of the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg monarchy), peso, duro or the famous piece of eight. Spanish dollars minted between 1732 and 1773 are also often referred to as columnarios. The portrait variety from 1772 and later are ...
By far the leading specie coin circulating in America was the Spanish silver dollar, defined as consisting of 387 grains of pure silver. The dollar was divided into "pieces of eight," or "bits," each consisting of one-eighth of a dollar. Spanish dollars came into the North American colonies through lucrative trade with the West Indies.
Italian fashion uniquely featured a broad U-shape rather than a V. [14] Spanish women also wore boned, heavy corsets known as "Spanish bodies" that compressed the torso into a smaller but equally geometric cone. [23] Bodices could be high-necked or have a broad, low, square neckline, often with a slight arch at the front early in the period.
A Spanish style of the later 15th century was still worn in this period: the hair was puffed over the ears before being drawn back at chin level into a braid or wrapped twist at the nape. First-time brides wore their hair loose, in token of virginity, and a wreath or chaplet of orange blossoms was traditional.
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Eight Spanish Escudos (1687) The first escudo was a gold coin introduced in 1535/1537, with coins denominated in escudos issued until 1833. It was initially worth 16 reales. When different reales were introduced, the escudo became worth 16 reales de plata in 1642, then 16 reales de plata fuerte or 40 reales de vellón from 1737.