The real de a ocho, also known as the Spanish dollar, the eight-real coin, or
the piece of eight, is a silver coin, of approximately 38 mm diameter, worth
eight reales, that was minted in the Spanish Empire after 1598. Its purpose
was to correspond to the German thaler. The Spanish dollar was widely used by
many countries as international currency because of its uniformity in standard
and milling characteristics. Some countries countersigned the Spanish
dollar so it could be used as their local currency.
The Spanish dollar was the coin upon which the original United States dollar
was based, and it remained legal tender in the United States until the Coinage
Act of 1857. Because it was widely used in Europe, the Americas, and the Far
East, it became the first world currency by the late 18th century. Aside from the
U.S. dollar, several other existing currencies, such as the Canadian dollar,
the Japanese yen, the Chinese yuan, the Philippine peso, and several currencies
in Latin America, were initially based on the Spanish dollar and other 8-real
coins. Diverse theories link the origin of the "$" symbol to the columns and
stripes that appear on one side of the Spanish dollar.
The term peso was used in Spanish to refer to this denomination, and it
became the basis for many of the currencies in the former Spanish
colonies, including the Argentine, Bolivian, Chilean, Colombian, Costa
Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Ecuadorian, Guatemalan, Honduran, Mexican,
Nicaraguan, Paraguayan, Philippine, Puerto Rican, Peruvian, Salvadoran,
Uruguayan, and Venezuelan pesos. Millions of Spanish dollars were minted
over the course of several centuries. They were among the most widely
circulating coins of the colonial period in the Americas, and were still in use
in North America and in South-East Asia in the 19th century.
History = Etymology of dollar=
In the 16th century, Count Hieronymus Schlick of Bohemia began minting coins
known as Joachimsthalers, named for Joachimsthal, the valley in the Ore
Mountains where the silver was mined. Joachimstaler was later shortened to
taler, a word that eventually found its way into Norwegian, Danish and Swedish
as daler, Russian as талер, Czech and Slovene as tolar, Polish as talar, Dutch
as daalder, Amharic as talari, Hungarian as tallér, Italian as tallero, Greek as
taliro, Spanish talero and English as dollar.
The Joachimsthalers weighed 451 Troy grains of silver. So successful were
these coins that similar thalers were minted in Burgundy and France. The
Burgundian Cross Thaler depicted the Cross of Burgundy and was prevalent in
the Burgundian Netherlands that were revolting against the Spanish king and
Duke of Burgundy Philip II. After 1575, the Dutch revolting provinces replaced
the currency with a daalder depicting a lion, hence its Dutch name
leeuwendaalder. Specifically to facilitate export trade,
the leeuwendaalder was authorized to contain 427.16 grains of .750 fine
silver, lighter than the large denomination coins then in circulation.
Clearly it was more advantageous for a Dutch merchant to pay a foreign debt in
leeuwendaalders rather than in other heavier, more costly coins. Thus, the
leeuwendaalder or lion dollar became the coin of choice for foreign trade. It
became popular in the Middle East, and colonies in the east and west.
They also circulated throughout the English colonies during the Seventeenth
and early Eighteenth centuries. From New Netherland the lion dollar spread to all
thirteen colonies in the west. English speakers began to apply the word
"dollar" also to the Spanish peso or "piece of eight" by 1581, which was also
widely used in the British North American colonies at the time of the
American Revolution, hence adopted as the name of the US monetary unit in the
late 18th century. = Spain=
After the introduction of the Guldengroschen in Austria in 1486, the
concept of a large silver coin with high purity eventually spread throughout the
rest of Europe. Monetary reform in Spain brought about the introduction of an
8-real coin in 1497. In 1537 the Spanish Escudo Gold Coin was introduced, which
was worth 16 reales. The later Gold Doubloon was worth 32 reales or 2
escudos. It is this divisibility into 8 which caused the silver coins to be
named "Pieces of Eight". In the following centuries, and into the
19th century, the coin was minted with several different designs at various
mints in Spain and the New World, having gained wide acceptance beyond Spain's
borders. Thanks to the vast silver deposits that were found in Mexico and
Potosí in modern-day Bolivia, and to silver from Spain's possessions
throughout the Americas, mints in Mexico and Peru also began to strike the coin.
The main New World mints for Spanish dollars were at Potosí, Lima, and Mexico
City, and silver dollars from these mints could be distinguished from those
minted in Spain by the Pillars of Hercules design on the reverse. In the
19th century, the coin's denomination was changed to 20 reales and finally 2
escudos. Spain's adoption of the peseta in 1869
and its joining the Latin Monetary Union meant the effective end of the last
vestiges of the Spanish dollar in Spain itself. However, the 5-peseta coin was
slightly smaller and lighter but was also of high purity silver.
In the 1990s, commemorative 2000-peseta coins were minted, similar in size and
weight to the 8 reales and also with high fineness.
= Mexico= Following independence in 1821, Mexican
coinage of silver reales and gold escudos followed that of Spanish lines
until decimalization and the introduction of the peso. The Mexican
8-reales coin continued to be a popular international trading coin throughout
the 19th century. After 1918, the peso was reduced in size
and fineness, with further reductions in the 1940s and 1950s. However, 2-, 5- and
10- peso coins were minted during the same period with sizes and fineness
similar to the old peso. = Ireland and British colonies=
The term cob was used in Ireland and the British colonies to mean a piece of
eight or a Spanish-American dollar, because Spanish-American gold and silver
coins were irregularly shaped and crudely struck during this period.
= Australia= When the colony of New South Wales was
founded in Australia in 1788, it ran into the problem of a lack of coinage.
In 1812, Governor Lachlan Macquarie took the initiative of using £10,000 in
Spanish dollars sent by the British government. To prohibit use outside the
colony and to double the number of coins, they simply punched out the
centers of the coins. Both the central plug and rims were stamped with a
sunburst. The punched centers were valued at 15 pence and the outer rims
became five-shilling pieces. The mutilated coins became the first
official currency produced specifically for circulation in Australia. The
experiment was however, short lived. The British Parliament passed the Sterling
Silver Money Act in 1826 which officially ended the legitimacy of use
of the Holey Dollar and Dump in Australian colonies.
= United States= The Coinage Act of 1792 created the
United States Mint, but the first U.S. dollars were not as popular as the
Spanish dollars, which were heavier and were made of finer silver. Indeed:
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. The Spanish silver dollar had been the
world's outstanding coin since the early 16th century, and was spread partially
by dint of the vast silver output of the Spanish colonies in Latin America. More
important, however, was that the Spanish dollar, from the 16th to the 19th
century, was relatively the most stable and least debased coin in the Western
world An eight-real coin nominally weighed
550.209 Spanish grains, which is 423.900 troy/avoirdupois grains, 0.93055 fine,
so contained 0.821791 troy ounces or 394.460 grains fine silver. Its weight
and purity varied significantly between mints and over the centuries. In
contrast, the Coinage Act of 1792 specified that the U.S. dollar would
contain 371 4⁄16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver. This specification was
based on the average weight of a random selection of worn Spanish dollars which
Hamilton caused to be weighed at the Treasury.
The coins had a nominal value of eight reales.
Before the American Revolution, owing to British mercantilist policies, there was
a chronic shortage of British currency in Britain's colonies. Trade was often
conducted with Spanish dollars that had been obtained through illicit trade with
the West Indies. Spanish coinage was legal tender in the United States until
the Coinage Act of 1857 discontinued the practice. The pricing of equities on
U.S. stock exchanges in 1⁄8-dollar denominations persisted until the New
York Stock Exchange converted first to pricing in sixteenths of a dollar on 24
June 1997, and shortly after that, to decimal pricing.
= Asia= Long tied to the lore of piracy, "pieces
of eight" were manufactured in the Americas and transported in bulk back to
Spain, making them a very tempting target for seagoing pirates. The Manila
galleons transported Mexican silver to Manila in the Spanish Philippines, where
it would be exchanged for Philippine and Chinese goods, since silver was the only
foreign commodity China would accept. In Oriental trade, Spanish dollars were
often stamped with Chinese characters known as "chop marks" which indicated
that particular coin had been assayed by a well-known merchant and determined to
be genuine. The specifications of the Spanish dollar became a standard for
trade in the Far East, with later Western powers issuing trade dollars,
and colonial currencies such as the Hong Kong dollar, to the same specifications.
The first Chinese yuan coins had the same specification as a Spanish dollar,
leading to a continuing equivalence in some respects between the names "yuan"
and "dollar" in the Chinese language. Fiction
In modern pop culture and fiction, "Pieces of Eight" are most often
associated with the popular notion of pirates.
= Fictional portrayals= In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure
Island, Long John Silver's parrot had apparently been trained to cry out,
"Pieces of eight!" This use tied the coin to fictional depictions of pirates.
Deriving from the wide popularity of this book, "Pieces of eight" is
sometimes used to mean "money" or "a lot of money", regardless of specific
denomination. In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's
End the Pirate Lords must meet together by presenting the "Nine Pieces of
Eight", since these Pieces were used to seal the goddess Calypso in her human
form by the first Brethren Court. As the Pirate Lords were, at the time of
sealing Calypso into her human form, too poor to offer real Spanish dollars, they
opted to use personal talismans instead, except for the "ninth piece of eight",
which was an actual piece of eight that is hanging off his bandana in all
movies. In Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle
numismatics, gold and pieces of eight are an integral part of the plot.
In Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Pieces of Eight are also mentioned among
the types of currency that the title character encounters.
Pieces of eight are the currency used in the video game Puzzle Pirates and the in
the Monkey Island game series. Pieces of Eight is the eighth studio
album and second concept album by Styx, released on 1 September 1978.
See also Doubloon
Spanish escudo Columnarios
Maria Theresa thaler Piastre
Holey dollar References
External links Hispan collections
HISPAN 1776 Information on Columnarios
The Colonial Coinage of Spanish America: An introduction by Daniel Frank Sedwick