Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 167 Currency
On September 9, the Kaiyuan (the captured Spanish treasure ship Santo Domingo) returned to Shixing Port, bringing back 28 Liao people (287 of whom died on the way) who were safe and sound.

More than ten days later, on October 10, "Zhengtu" and "Kaituo" led five Portuguese merchant ships back to Shixing Port. 14 Ming Dynasty immigrants filed out and immediately filled the temporary isolation area at the dock.

At this point, the entire 1630 immigration operation was successfully completed, with a total of 2663 immigrants transported back, bringing the population of Qiming Island to more than 5965 (including 728 Indians), an increase of 106% over last year.

Now that the immigrants have been brought back, the shipping fees paid to the Portuguese need to be settled.

Based on the number of immigrants brought to the port by the Portuguese and the large amount of production and living materials they carried, the time travelers had to pay them a total of 247800 taels of silver (including more than 182600 taels of silver for immigration fees).

After ten days of quarantine, several Portuguese captains came to the Shixing Fort Administrative Building to settle their bills with excitement. They saw more than 20 cash boxes neatly arranged in the reception hall, which was very visually impactful.

"This is..." Miranda's captain, Tiago Jallo Sosa, grabbed a handful of golden coins and his eyes immediately widened.

"Yes, it's gold!" Li Xianqing said with a smile, "Here are 16,000 taels of gold coins. According to the Ming Dynasty's gold-silver exchange rate, that's equivalent to 192,000 taels of silver. Add to that 30,800 taels of silver coins, and the total is exactly 222,800 taels. Well, you received a deposit of 25,000 taels in Guangzhou, and we've already deducted that."

"Excuse me, sir." Seeing this, Tiago exchanged a glance with his companions, then turned and asked, "Excuse me, did you mint these gold and silver coins yourself?"

"Yes, these gold and silver coins are all minted by ourselves."

"Uh..." Tiago hesitated for a moment, then said stubbornly, "Can you guarantee the gold and silver content of these gold and silver coins? I'm sorry, no offense, but if these coins are mixed with too many other unnecessary metal components, we should consider them...base metal currencies. Therefore, we still need to discuss the exchange rate with you..."

"Do you suspect that these gold and silver coins are not of sufficient quality to cover your expenses?"

“…” Tiago and several other Portuguese captains remained silent.

Obviously, they had doubts about the gold and silver coins minted by Qiming Island, and were very worried that their quality was insufficient, thus becoming "suckers" in vain.

You should know that more than a hundred years ago, the Kingdom of Spain had not yet obtained gold and silver from the Americas, and there was a general shortage of precious metals throughout Europe, which resulted in the gold (silver) content of many currencies flooding the market being obviously insufficient, which once caused large-scale currency devaluation.

Compared with the Chinese dynasties that implemented the same standard currency system for most of the time, Europe has always been in a bulk form, with each kingdom, and even many nobles and bishops having the right to mint and issue their own currency.

Although they all claimed that their currency was made of pure gold and silver, only a fool would believe the words of these greedy nobles. God knows how much lead and copper they added to the gold (silver) coins.

This not only leads to the proliferation of currency types, but also causes the rampant spread of inferior currencies in the market, which is extremely unfriendly to cross-border traders.

During this period, for merchants from European countries, calculating the fineness of various currencies was already a great art, not to mention the exchange rates between several currencies, which required a long time to learn and master.

The Scottish Andrew's Shield, the Arnoldus's Gold Gould (of very poor quality), the Carolus silver coin minted by Charles of Burgundy, the French Petit Ecu, the David and the Falve of the Archbishop of Utrecht, the Milanese silver, the English Rolle (worth 10 shillings), the Rhine Florin of the Bishop of Cologne...

There are more than a hundred types of things. If you go abroad to do a few business deals, you may receive a bunch of miscellaneous gold and silver currencies, which will definitely make you collapse from converting them.

Of course, you can also choose to settle in only one currency to avoid the hassle of conversion, but this will inevitably affect the scale of your business and make it impossible to expand your business interests to other regions.

In addition to the wide variety of currencies, the most troublesome thing is the determination of exchange rates between currencies of different countries.

Because it can change at any time, merchants' profits will become increasingly difficult to control due to changes in exchange rates.

Sometimes, many currencies circulate well in the first half of the year, but become worthless in the second half of the year due to war, regime change, etc. (mainly because they are mixed with too much base metal, but they are not completely worthless).

Alternatively, a currency may have enjoyed good credit in the past few years due to the king's insistence, making it popular among merchants. However, after the old king dies, the new king may over-mint coins, causing a collapse in credit. Merchants in other countries may no longer be willing to accept this currency, or the currency may have to be devalued to continue circulating.

However, over the past hundred years, the Spanish have shipped huge amounts of gold and silver from the Americas back to Europe, causing the amount of extremely low-quality currency in the entire market to gradually decrease.

However, many countries or city-states, after receiving gold and silver coins of good quality, chose to melt them directly in order to make up for the financial deficit, and then recast them by mixing them with a large amount of base metals and put them on the market, resulting in the phenomenon of bad money driving out good money.

Faced with numerous foreign gold and silver currencies, the Chinese mainland adopted a simple, crude, and far more effective approach. Whether it was Japanese gold and silver coins, Spanish pesos, or even Portuguese escudos, when Ming merchants received these coins, they paid no attention to the value they were marked on. Instead, they examined their fineness (silver and gold content) and then... weighed them.

To put it bluntly, all foreign gold and silver coins will be used as weighing currency, and their status is the same as silver ingots and silver ingots!
In daily use, if the value of the purchased goods is less than a silver coin, then take out the silver scissors and cut it in half or into several pieces, and then weigh it to pay, which has the same effect as loose change.

If you suspect that the gold and silver coins are mixed with too much base metal, I'm sorry, we will either refuse to accept them directly or melt them down and let an expert check the specific fineness before discussing the payment.

This method of "checking banknotes" by weighing was correct because at that time a common practice in European countries was coin clipping, also known as stealing silver or gold.

Because at that time, most European currencies were struck coins made by stamping metal, which had the advantages of clear patterns and low cost.

However, this also resulted in many coins having uneven edges, which speculative merchants or residents would cut off the uneven edges of the coins and then collect the precious metal scraps. This accumulated small amounts into large amounts, leading to illegal profit and causing the gold and silver content of many coins to be unequal to their value.

For example, Qiming Island received tens of thousands of silver pesos from its smuggling partner Pedro on several occasions. Each of them looked like it was chewed by a dog. Some of the silver coins were not only irregular and round, but also had a noticeable missing circle on the edge of the currency, or had become thinner. Only the pattern in the middle could still be roughly seen.

Anyone with a discerning eye can tell that this currency is insufficient in weight. If you use a scale to weigh it, you will find that it is definitely missing a lot of grams.

When the immigrant ship went to the Ming Dynasty to purchase supplies, the merchants in Guangzhou also repeatedly checked the pesos and silver coins they received from the time travelers, and then took out a scale to weigh the silver coins they paid.

During the entire transaction process, the level of meticulous inspection of silver coins was no less than the "flour" transaction between poisonous rice in later generations.

However, in order to gain a high reputation for coinage, Qiming Island did not mint gold and silver coins that were short in weight, and did not contain many base metals.

The weight of gold and silver coins is 30 grams each, about eight cents and one cent, with a fineness of 89% to 90%, including nearly 27 grams of silver and about 3 grams of lead.

The silver standard of the Ming Dynasty was that each kuping of silver was approximately equal to 37.31 grams, with a purity of 93%, which was called pure silver.

Then each Qiming Island silver dollar can be converted into about 0.8 taels of silver, that is, one tael of silver is equal to 1.24-1.25 silver dollars.

In order to prevent coin clipping, the time travelers directly added a circle of serrations to the casting shape of gold and silver coins.

In this way, any signs of cutting or friction can be detected at a glance, and the insufficient currency can be refused.

Of course, if calculated by transaction value, both gold coins and silver coins are large-denomination currencies. Given the current economic development level of Qiming Island, most residents may not use them in their daily lives in the future.

Therefore, the Shixingbao Mint also minted a large number of small-denomination coins, namely dimes and cents.

The dimes are divided into five dimes, two dimes and one dimes, and are made of brass with a small amount of lead added.

The penny coins are five cents, two cents, and one cent, and are made of steel.

In general, the currency minted by Qiming Island is not only of high quality but also beautiful in style. What's more, all sizes are unified. It is much better than those European currencies that are ugly, irregular in shape, and even have inconsistent weights.

After checking for a long time, the Portuguese finally accepted all the money paid by Qiming Island and carried boxes of coins back to the ship.

These gold and silver coins, judging from their style and appearance alone, look much more regular and exquisite than the Spanish pesos, and their quality is not too bad either, so they should be consistent with the value claimed by these Chinese people.

Moreover, they paid a huge amount of gold.

If this is taken to Europe and exchanged for silver, it would be a huge extra profit for free.

Because, in Europe, the gold-silver price ratio is far higher than that in the East!
Presumably, these Chinese people, like the Ming people, know nothing about this, which gives us Portuguese an opportunity to take advantage.

(End of this chapter)