I am Peter III, Emperor of the Hexagon of the Goose Kingdom

Chapter 215 Russia's Multiple Currencies and the National Bank

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Ps: I went to the hospital with my family for a day today. My head was about to explode from the sun, and my eyes hurt. These two are the foreshadowing.

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Peter also knew about the arrival of cooks. In fact, this was his arrangement. First, the best cooks were selected, and then popularized in the army.

One cook leads more cooks to form a nutrition supply team, at least to eliminate septicemia.

But besides the cook, Peter has started to work on equally more important things
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Abolish the mint and create a national bank!

Peter knew that at the end of the 17th century, there was another financial crisis in Tsarist Russia.

Since the time of Yelena Glinskaya, the weight of the silver kopeck has dropped from 0.64 grams to 0.39 grams, making it an insignificant coin.

In 1698, Peter the Great, who was busy preparing for a new round of war with Sweden, issued an order stipulating that the weight of the kopeck was 0.28 grams, and the silver content was 0.25-0.26 grams.

In a letter to Alexander Danilovich Menshikov, Peter the Great contemptuously called these coins "lice".

At the same time, the coins necessary for small trades disappeared completely, and the kopecks were cut in half, and sometimes in thirds, so that it took a lot of time and effort to calculate the amount of coins for large payments.

When Peter I stayed in London as a member of the embassy, ​​he visited the Mint in the Tower of London many times and carefully watched the working conditions of the minting machine.

The head of the British Mint at the time was Isaac Newton, and it was under his leadership that Britain made a full transition to mechanical coinage.

In 1700, Peter I issued an order to inform the residents to implement copper coins - "Porushka" and "1/4 copper coins". Since then, coins have been made mechanically on a mechanical pressure bed instead of using Wire handcrafted.

In the summary of the plan, the new coins and silver coins are in circulation at the same time. It is planned to use 1 pood of copper to mint new coins of 12 rubles and 70 kopeks, so that the price of copper in 2 porushkas is equal to the market price of silver in 1 kopek.

The new mint established for the minting of new coins was called the Riverside Mint, because this mint was located in the Kremlin near the banks of the Moskva River, not far from the Borovets Gate.

A year later, in order to supplement the copper coins, Peter I issued a new batch of silver coins:

“1/2卢布”、“1/4卢布”、币值为10金戛的“格里文尼克”和“金币切尔文。

All these coins were minted at the mint established in the village of Kadashev on the other side of the Moskva River, that is, from this time on, the concept of coins began to extend only to coins minted by machines, while those made by hand with wire The old coins began to be called "Little Jinjia".

Both coins were minted at the newly built Kardashev Mint.

Various machines were installed in the new mint, rolling lathes for making sheet metal, cutting lathes for cutting circles, and printing lathes for casting, driven by water or horse-drawn grinding wheels.

In the earliest machines, the master mold was fixed on a hammer falling from a height, and then transitioned to the current screw press.

Before 1704, the share of new coins was relatively insignificant, as the population was slower to adapt to the new coins, and the main coins were still silver kopecks made of wire.

In 1700, a new mint appeared in the building where the meeting of gentry was originally located in Red Square. This mint also began to mint silver kopecks. Four years later, silver rubles were issued. The issuance of this coin made the Russian monetary system Presented in a complete state.

The wire minting of coins continued until 1718 with the aim of allowing each Russian resident to choose coins at his own discretion, in which case 100 old silver kopeks weighed as much as 1 new ruble.

After the minting of wire coins stopped, large coins began to occupy a dominant position in the domestic currency system, but at this time the fineness of silver, such as the fineness of silver in 1 ruble, declined sharply, and began to be significantly inferior to European thalers.

The price Russia paid for endless, exhausting wars had an impact.

1718 may be the year of the end of the reformation of the petro coinage, and the silk kopecks were no longer minted.

In 1722, the Tsar issued a special order prohibiting the use of Alten as a unit of monetary calculation, and the original gold came to be called "1/2 kopeck".

By the end of Peter I's reign, three metals were predominantly used in domestic coin production.

币值为2卢布的钱币用黄金铸造，1卢布、1/2卢布和1格里文尼克用白银铸造，5戈比、1戈比、1金戛和波鲁什卡用铜铸造。

This is also the situation Peter is facing now. Currencies of different degrees, except those made of copper, all contain real gold and silver.

But since Peter the Great, the value of the currency has remained unchanged.

The silver content of European thalers has always been higher than that of Russian currencies.

During the reign of Peter I, Russia regained the access to the Baltic Sea from Sweden, and the first silver refinery on the Ergun River in Transbaikal also started production.

In addition, several copper smelters were founded in the Urals, one of which was founded by the later Russian historian and former artillery lieutenant Vasily Nikitich Tatischev on the commission of Peter I.

However, the problem of raw materials for coins is quite acute, and the country has to concentrate all its forces on many wars and reforms to the ancient management methods.

Peter I sought to find domestic precious metals by recruiting the Chamber of Commerce, an organization formed in the 17th century to acquire furs from Siberia's inhabitants.

For the purchase of gold and silver, considerable funds were allocated to the Chamber of Commerce from the treasury, 1711 rubles were allocated to the Chamber of Commerce in 50000 alone.

Trade representatives from the Chamber of Commerce traveled through the Russian bazaars, buying gold and silver at prices set by the Tsar.

When they appeared in the market, no one but they dared to buy the precious metals, but it was the taxes levied from foreign merchants in the form of thalers that provided more silver.

In such a case, the state price of thaler, during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, Peter I's father, was 50 kopecks, but the market price was much higher.

Normally, it should be the canceled silk kopecks that provide most of the silver to the national treasury, but the people are not in a hurry to bid farewell to this kind of kopecks, and prefer not to hand over silver to the mint, but to use them to smelt holy kopecks. Like clothing or tableware either kept in chests or buried in the ground as hoards, no punishment will work.

Those who ended up sending their coins to the mint got only 10% more than the original price.

(End of this chapter)