Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Silver 8-real coin of 1768 from the Potosí mint. The real (English: /ɹeɪˈɑl/ Spanish: /reˈal/) (meaning: "royal", plural: reales) was a unit of currency in Spain for several centuries after the mid-14th century. [1] It underwent several changes in value relative to other units throughout its lifetime until it was replaced by the peseta in ...
The silver real (Spanish: real de plata) was the currency of the Spanish colonies in America and the Philippines. In the seventeenth century the silver real was established at two billon reales (reales de vellón) or sixty-eight maravedíes. Gold escudos (worth 16 reales) were also issued.
The monetary unit in the former Spanish colonies was the silver peso, with a value of 8 reales. Silver coins were: cuartillo (1/4 R), medio (1/2 R), real, peseta (2 R), medio peso (4 R), and peso (8 R). If minted to standard, they were either 0·916 fine or (from 1772) 0·902 fine.
Spanish American mines were the world's most abundant sources of silver during this time period. Spanish America's ability to supply a great amount of silver and China's strong demand for this commodity which the Spanish supplied via Latin American trade with the Philippines using the Manila Galleons, [7] resulted in a spectacular mining boom ...
The Spanish silver dollar created a global silver standard from the 16th to 19th centuries. The silver standard [a] is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of silver. Silver was far more widespread than gold as the monetary standard worldwide, from the Sumerians c. 3000 BC until 1873.
As the Spanish need for silver increased, new innovations for more efficient extraction of silver were developed, such as the amalgamation method of using mercury to extract silver from ore. [6] In the two centuries that followed the discovery of Potosí in 1545, the Spanish silver mines in the Americas produced 40,000 tons of silver. [7]
The Philippine peso (Filipino: piso) is derived from the Spanish silver coin Real de a Ocho or Spanish dollar, in wide circulation in the entire America and Southeast Asia during the 17th and 18th centuries, through its use in the Spanish colonies and even in the United States and Canada. One peso Treasury Certificate