Copper money in Mexico: the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century
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[1] Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
México
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- Localización: Mining, money and markets in the early modern Atlantic: digital approaches and new perspectives / Renate Pieper (ed. lit.), Claudia de Lozanne Jefferies (ed. lit.), Markus A. Denzel (ed. lit.), 2019, ISBN 9783030238933, págs. 231-255
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
Colonial Mexico was an important producer of copper. Mining centres in Michoacán and other regions provided enough copper to satisfy local needs and, from the eighteenth century on, also to supply the military and sugar industries in Cuba and Spain. After an initial minting in the sixteenth century, ineffectual to provide minor coins for change, copper minting was resumed at the end of the Spanish colonial period. In the intervening centuries, the only means for local exchange were the tokens fabricated by local merchants and shopkeepers. The late colonial copper currency resolved some problems, but it produced many others, almost entirely passed on to the early national period. Excessive currency in circulation, continuous falsification and confusing views about the sense and usefulness of copper coinage figure among these problems, which damaged seriously the national treasury and the economy of the poorer classes and impeded the creation of a national monetary system
