User:Donald Trung/Piastre de l'Indochine navigational template

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This page serves as a page to attempt to create a navigational template for coins of French Indo-China issued between 1885 and 1939 and explores how best to do so. Target: Template:Coins of French Indochina (1885-1939).

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Basis.
  • French Indochina 1 Cent 1895 coin.
    • 1 Cent 1885-1895.
  • French Indochina 1 Cent 1896 coin.
    • 1 Cent 1896-1939.
  • French Indochina 1/2 Cent 1939 coin (KM#20).
    • 1/2 Cent 1935-1940.
  • French Indochina Sapeque 1902 coin (KM#6).
    • Sapeque 1887-1902.
  • French Indochina 5 Cents 1930 coin (KM#18).
    • 5 Cent 1923-1939.
  • French Indochina 10 Cents 1911 coin.
    • 10 Cent 1885-1937.
  • French Indochina 20 Cents 1930 coin.
    • 20 Cent 1885-1937.
  • French Indochina 50 Cents 1936 coin (KM#4).
    • 50 Cent 1885-1936.
  • French Indochina Piastre de Commerce 1885 coin (KM#5).
    • Piastre 1885-1895.
  • French Indochina Piastre de Commerce 1897 coin (KM#5a).
    • Piastre 1895-1928.
  • French Indochina Piastre 1931 coin (KM#19).
    • Piastre 1931.
Preceding coinages.
Succeeding coinages.
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Sapèque
Cent
  • ½ cent (1935-1940)
  • 1 Cent (1885-1895)
  • 1 Cent (1896-1939)
  • 5 Cent (1923-1939)
  • 10 Cent (1885-1937)
  • 20 Cent (1885-1937)
  • 50 Cent (1885-1936)
Piastre
  • Piastre de Commerce (1885-1895)
  • Piastre de Commerce (1895-1928)
  • 1 piastre (1931)
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Coins of French Indochina (1885-1939)

Sapèque
Cent
  • ½ cent (1935-1940)
  • 1 Cent (1885-1895)
  • 1 Cent (1896-1939)
  • 5 Cent (1923-1939)
  • 10 Cent (1885-1937)
  • 20 Cent (1885-1937)
  • 50 Cent (1885-1936)
Piastre
  • Piastre de Commerce (1885-1895)
  • Piastre de Commerce (1895-1928)
  • 1 piastre (1931)

I will keep "this version" of the draft concept in case I wish to "roll it back" after implementing major changes.

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Coins of French Indochina (1885-1939)

1 piastre = 100 cent = 200~600 sapèques

Sapèque
Cent
Piastre
Preceding coinages.
Succeeding coinages.
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Category:Category navigational templates for coins

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Category:Category navigational templates for coins

Why it's so difficult to neatly categorise all French Indo-Chinese coins into a navigational template

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I have always found the currency units and denominations of the Late Manchu Qing Dynasty period and Early Republic of China 🇹🇼 period very confusing, one of the reasons I began writing about them on Wikipedia and uploading images of them to Wikimedia Commons was to not let anyone else share my confusion. I met a Drenthic man that collects bamboo tokens for decades that still hadn't figured it out, then after years of research I finally figured out how the system works, how it was an odd combination between multiple commodity currencies and coin types measured on their content and quality, respectively, and I managed to create navigational templates for them on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia finally ending the confusion. This is about why despite seeming more easy, French Indo-Chinese currencies are harder to catrgorise.

For whatever reason I never thought of this until early August 2021, but the French Cochinchinese 2 (two) Sapèque coin (French for "cash coin") while containing the name of the country in French and the Gregorian year using Hindu-Arabic numbers on one side and was minted at the Paris Mint... Doesn't actually contain a denomination most White people can read. The side with its denomination has the inspiration "Great France's Annam" and "Value of 2 (Two)" both written in Classical Chinese (Vietnamese) and not in any language most White people can understand. This will make sense later but more background on the French attempt to provide market liquidity first in French Cochinchina and later French Indo-China.

As Vietnamese history is very dependent on Chinese history like the other Chinese cultural countries it is important to look at what cash coins are and what role they played in the Vietnamese economy. Cash coins were first introduced during China's Warring States period and became the national coinage following the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, China's first real Empire, initially bronze, silver, and gold cash coins existed and the government provided currencies for both the rich and the poor, bronze cash coins were issued for small transactions and silver and gold for big, this continued for a number of centuries until the imperial Chinese government only started providing market liquidity for small transactions and merchants, aristocrats, and other people generally described as "the bourgeoisie" began using privately minted silver and gold sycees. These came in different shapes and sizes and while today the boat-shaped sycees are best remembered they came in an extremely wide and diverse amount of forms and their purity content was almost never the same. As people generally only trusted those from the same villages, or if living in a city the same neighbourhoods, all sycees had to be inspected when entering a new area and were "chopped", often so many times that the original sycee became unrecognisable under a large number of "seals of approval" of various shops, merchant inspectors, traders, banks and money-changers, Etc. This continued to be the case well into the late 19th (nineteenth) century to early 20th (twentieth) century. Cash coins were simply too small for large transactions and cheques and later banknotes were literally invented in what is now Sichuan because of the pains of carrying cash coins. Following the Spanish (Castilian) conquest of America half of all silver from the America's found its way to China and the Chinese market was flooded with Spanish pieces of eight (also known as "Spanish dollars"), like everywhere else in the world at the time they were chopped and traded based on weight.

Following the French Revolution the Spanish Empire collapsed and became a large number of countries spanning multiple continents, these countries had many different currencies that found their way to the Far East and traded on the Chinese and Vietnamese markets, the Mexican Peso would remain to be the dominant currency of the world for some time. Chinese and Vietnamese people saw Spanish Dollars and Mexican Pesos as sycees and treated them as such, the French Cochinchinese Piastre and French Indo-Chinese Piastre would be silver standard currencies based on the Mexican Peso. But this is the high end of the market.

The government of the Nguyễn Dynasty, like its predecessors, continued producing both bronze and zinc cash coins. Because Vietnam was infinitely poorer than China whatever happened in Imperial Vietnam tended to be "the poor man's imitation of Imperial China", historical Vietnamese dynasties have produced good cash coins but more often than not Vietnamese cash coins are of such poor quality that Chinese illegal counterfeiters and pirates can produce more and better cash coins than the Nguyễn Empire's government and more often than not smugglers would import Vietnamese cash coins and remove copper while counterfeiting them with lead and then sending them back to Vietnam to buy Mexican Pesos and other commodities at a large discount. These "leaded cash coins" threw the Vietnamese currency system in a downward spiral that would make EmpLemon blush, combine this with the fact that Vietnamese people tended to burry bronze cash coins out of superstition and the Lê government introduced the zinc cash coins. The Nguyễn Dynasty continued this as to provide market liquidity. While zinc cash coins aren't as bad as many historical Chinese iron cash coins, the 19th (nineteenth) century would see global market forces combined with internal factors completely breaking the traditional cash coin system. Japan was the first (1st) country to try "the Daqian approach", a "Daqian" is a Manchu Qing Dynasty period term to refer to a type of cash coin with a nominal value higher than 4 (four), during the reign of the Xianfeng Emperor the Qing was facing dozens of internal rebellions including the bloodiest war of the 19th century, the Taiping Rebellion, a blocking of the Yunnan copper mines, depletion of other copper mines, rising military expenditures and the creation of a large number of provincial armies that would plague China until 1949. These various factors caused the government of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to spend more money than ever before but they simply didn't have enough money, so they re-introduced both paper money and large denomination cash coins to deal with the financial crises. Inspired by this the Kingdom of Joseon (Korea) and the Nguyễn Dynasty both adopted the "Daqian" model, notice that both had their own internal and external reasons for this.

The Empire of Đại-Nam recently lost its territory of Nam Kỳ to France and had to pay a large number of war reparations to the French. Since the Minh Mạng period Đại-Nam produced silver coins, so during the 1860's they decided to make "their own (localised) version of the Mexican Peso" but this coin wasn't accepted by the French. The "Vietnamese Daqian" was purely designed as what can at best be described as a scam or a Ponzi scheme and the market rejected them, but like in China and Korea their introduction proved irreversible, while most large denominations disappeared the 10 (ten) văn cash coins would remain to be produced until the very end of the Nguyễn Dynasty period.

But the story of the French Indo-Chinese Piastre starts in French Cochinchina, where the French colonial administration wishes to drive out Vietnamese cash coins from the economy, at first they introduced the much smaller French 1 cent (centime) coin and puncture a round hole into it and introduced these, unfortunately for the French the Annamites completely rejected these, perhaps it was because of the European design or perhaps it was because of the round hole. But the French tried something new, they would introduce their own cash coins with a value of 2 (two), now I must say that I have read conflicting reports on the meaning of this denomination, some sources claim that it means two (2) zinc cash coins as it's a very small and thin bronze cash coin, however, others note that the French meant 2 (two) bronze cash coins deliberately invoking Gresham's law to end the Empire of Đại-Nam's monetary over French Cochinchina. While most people were illiterate until the late 20th (twentieth) century I think that the term "limitedly literate" or "low-literate" would be better to describe the majority of people in places with written languages, like the Dutch term "laaggeletterdheid". Likely most people could read some very common Traditional Chinese characters and understood what the coins said, especially merchants since writing was literally invented to account for people's personal and private property in Bronze Age Mesopotamia.

So I suspect that most people likely thought that the French were scamming them or that money-changers, an extremely common profession that actually exchanged the various metal types, rejected them making them effectively useless, especially since no French banking system was established throughout most of the country.

Another thing to consider is the fact that the entire monetary system of Chinese cultural countries weren't actually centered on the coins and their denominations but on their metal content, purity, manufacturing quality, and most importantly weight. When the French Cochinchinese coins were introduced they all contained their purity and weight on them. Note that at the time the government of the Empire of Đại-Nam also issued both silver (cash) coins and sycees, also in gold. This leads me to believe that these coins were likely "treated as sycees" by the Annamite population.

What is probably more important now is to look at which coins inscriptions in Traditional Chinese characters appeared and at which coins exclusive French inscriptions appeared. The only bronze coins of French Cochinchina were the 2 Sapèques and the 1 cent, these were incidentally the only coins with Traditional Chinese inscriptions, the 1 cent only contained four (4) characters, namely "百分之一" (Bách Phân chi Nhất) indicating that they had a set exchange rate with the Mexican Peso (as the largest French-made coin at the time was the 50 (fifty) cents). For White people the weight was written down as 10 (ten) grams in the metric system, likely giving them more information on how to deal with them when paying Annamites. I suspect that the information on them was simply "to bridge" the information gap between the French and Annamites in daily trade and transactions.

During the early colonial period an extremely high amount of French Francs were imported and the Cambodian Tical (based on the Siamese Tical) was replaced with the Cambodian Franc at par with the French Franc. As the Cambodian 1 cent coin was a cash coin I suspect that a large number of Siamese and a small number of Annamese currency citculated in Cambodia during their Dark Ages (the Post-Angkor period). The introduction of the French Franc was easy there, but for the Annamites the Mexican Peso remained the most important instrument of international trade.

Now the Nguyễn Dynasty and French Cochinchina didn't exist in isolation and it's important to compare them with the Manchu Qing Dynasty, during the Guangxu period the Qing introduced a lot of different provincial coinages. These coinages, like the French Indo-Chinese Piastre, contained both Classical Chinese and European inscriptions. Rather than the French language their inscriptions were in the English language. This was likely done because of the closer relationship with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the fact that many foreign merchants spoke English. Alternatively it could be because these innovations started in the Province of Guangdong which bordered Hong Kong and primarily dealt with the British and other provinces just imitated the Guangdongers. Later Qing national coins would also feature English-language inscriptions. Unlike the French Cochinchinese Piastre these Manchu Qing Dynasty silver coins didn't use the metric system but the traditional Chinese weights and measurements system, just like the Nguyễn Dynasty did using even the same names and denominations. Well, the Qing used slightly different ones with the Nguyễn Dynasty using the Mạch and the Manchu Qing Dynasty using the Ly. Furthermore, the Quán ("String of cash coins") appeared on Nguyễn Dynasty coins and the Nguyễn also issued their own silver sycees while the Qing issued small silver coins to compliment sycees during their transition to a European-style currency.

The Nguyễn Dynasty became two (2) French protectorate countries and in 1887 became a part of French Indo-China, in 1885 the French Indo-Chinese Piastre was introduced, predating French Indo-China by two (2) years and in Cambodia these would be used alongside the Cambodian Franc until the early 1900's. Like Cambodia, the Empire of Đại-Nam issued its own native coinage basically uninterrupted during the period of French domination.

After realising that we actually know the mintage figures of the Khải Định Thông Bảo (啓定通寶) series of cash coins and that these were 27,629,000 (first series) and 200,000,000 (second series) and that these cash coins were produced during the 1920's I opened up my old Dutch coin almanac to look for comparative figures. Interestingly enough, before World War II such mintage figures were quite rare in the Netherlands, however, then I realised that the population of the Netherlands was a lot smaller than that of Đại-Nam, so I checked the Netherlands East-Indies. Note that the Netherlands East-Indies had a similar structure and role as French Indo-China and it also had an enormous population. My hypotheses were proven right and the mintage figures for the Netherlands East-Indies were indeed like those of the Khải Định Thông Bảo (啓定通寶) cash coins. What is important to note here is that the Khải Định Thông Bảo (啓定通寶) cash coins were worth ¹/200 of a Piastre, this means that they were valued at ½ (half) a cent.

If only strings of 200 (two-hundred) Khải Định Thông Bảo (啓定通寶) made a Piastre, then they were worth three (3) times as much as a zinc cash coin at the time. This indicates that the value of the standard cash coins were diminishing, likely due to various market conditions and factors. I suspect that the scarcer quantity of zinc cash coins made them worth more. It is important to note that as of the 2010's one can buy old Nguyễn Dynasty period zinc cash coins in Hanoi for one-fifth (1/5th) the price of FAKE Chinese-made "good luck coins" that are phoney versions of Manchu Qing Dynasty cash coins made today, plus on websites like eBay one can today buy zinc cash coins in freakin' bulk, large bulks, for almost no money. This means that despite the fact that zinc cash coins were (and still are) very brittle they survived into the present day in largely unchanged states and they are so common among old currency dealers that sellers will just give them away for free while buying other cheap coins. They still have almost no market value today.

So this means that the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty still cared about the liquidity of the market and that during the 1920's they were not worried about the zinc cash coins. But we see a change during the reign of the Bảo Đại Emperor.

During the Bảo Đại period three (3) different types of Bảo Đại Thông Bảo (保大通寶) cash coins were produced, according to some Vietnamese historians "their value was too low to actually have been worth something and were only produced symbolically" but I think that this is likely just modern historiography downplaying the importance of the Nguyễn Dynasty under French domination. The government of the Nguyễn Dynasty was responsible for the production of cash coins and most rural areas of the French protectorates of Annam and Tonkin were likely not being served by the low value copper-alloy coins of the French so the Nguyễn government had to step in. What is interesting is that during the Khải Định period only "middle-size" cash coins were produced while the two (2) preceding Emperors before him only produced "large cash coins". During the Bảo Đại period "small", "middle", and "large" cash coins were produced. What is interesting is that the machine-struck Bảo Đại Thông Bảo cash coins had a mintage number of 98,000,000.

What I think is that the "small" Bảo Đại Thông Bảo cash coins were likely intended to fulfill the duties of zinc cash coins as their likely market value, according to Howard A. Daniel, III, was 1/1000th (one-thousandth) of a French Indo-Chinese Piastre, that is very little. Also notice the fact that their copper-alloy also contained a lot more zinc than any previous 20th (twentieth) century Nguyễn Dynasty cash coins making them look completely yellow. At the same time the French introduced the ½ (half) cent coin to French Indo-China, these were obviously worth 1/200th (one-two-hundredth) of a Piastre. This means that both the French and Nguyễn governments were investing into the market liquidity of the Vietnamese by contributing more to the lowest ends. The French have always wanted to try this and almost all their efforts also use holed currencies. But the introduction of this coin actually puts the "middle size" and "large size" Bảo Đại Thông Bảo cash coins at an awkward position within the monetary system, as they don't really fill in a niche, at least not at first glance.

It seems to me that the cast Bảo Đại Thông Bảo cash coins might have not been "too small" but "too big", as a Bảo Đại period cash coin was the same size as a one cent coin but thinner and much, much more poorly made. While I don't like speaking so poorly about my second (2nd) favourite coin from history it is interesting to note that the poor construction of the coins might have made them more useful as change, because of the fact that the market values the machine-struck and uniform coins of the French more, at least if the economy of the Manchu Qing Dynasty is something to go off from. But the small brass machine-struck Bảo Đại Thông Bảo cash coins most certainly fulfilled their role as "pocket change", or more accurately, "string change" as the old Vietnamese did not have any pockets, hence had to string their cash coins together. It is also important to note that the small machine-struck Bảo Đại Thông Bảo cash coins had an official value of 1/600 (one to six-hundred) just like the zinc cash coins. I suspect that the "medium size" cash coins were likely worth 1/360 (one to three-hundred-and-sixty) Piastre, the nominal values were likely suggestions or were the only "prices" (exchange rates) maintained by the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty at the time. This or the "large" Bảo Đại Thông Bảo cash coins were actually accepted as a 1 (one) cent coin making their denomination of "10" (ten) accurate in comparison to the brass machine-struck Bảo Đại Thông Bảo cash coins. However, this is speculation.

During the late 19th (nineteenth) century the Guangzhou Mint was the largest mint in the world producing more coins than any other on a daily basis, this wasn't the national mint of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, it was the provincial mint of Guangdong. Other Chinese provinces followed suit and soon a large number of modern machine mints operated in the Manchu Qing Dynasty during the 1890's. The Chinese wanted to have good market liquidity as cash coins were becoming increasingly scarce while more silver entered into the market through international trade. It wasn't too long until the government mandated fixed exchange rates were unsustainable and the price of silver went down. Traditionally 1000 (one-thousand) cash coins were worth 1 (one) Tael of silver, with a Mexican Peso being lighter than a Tael and all other foreign currencies also being traded on weight, fineness, quality, Etc.

I believe that much likely the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty was facing a similar position as that of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. Now there are a number of important differences to note here, Đại-Nam is about the size and has the population of a single Manchu Qing Dynasty province, the Chinese never used zinc currencies at the scale that the Vietnamese did with zinc coinages dripping into every aspect of life and having THE ENTIRE economy based on such a detrimental coinage system, the Nguyễn Dynasty produced its own sycees and gold coins, Qing Dynasty provinces were highly autonomous after the Taiping Rebellion while the Nguyễn tried to maintain strong central control although it modeled itself after the Qing with also having provincial armies and garrisons. Furthermore, while the Qing lost a few port cities like Hong Kong, Guangzhouwan, Qingdao, Weihaiwei, Etc. The Nguyễn lost its entire south and the French flooded this region with French Francs while the Nguyễn had to pay war raparations in Mexican Pesos to the French.

These factors all influenced the different currency systems. While the Qing provinces innovated with machine-struck cash coins, the Vietnamese ones were minted in Paris. In 1905 the government of the French Protectorate of Tonkin attempted to made machine-struck zinc cash coins to improve the market liquidity of the poor, these cash coins were ill-received. The exchange rate between cash coins and silver was also much higher in Đại-Nam, with 600 zinc cash coins being worth 1 French Indo-Chinese Piastre. By contrast 1000 copper-alloy cash coins were officially valued at 1 Mexican Peso (or equivalent coin, including the ones produced by the Qing itself at this point). This is all despite the quality of Vietnamese currency being loathsome and horrid and their content being without much value and the region being frequently the victim of Chinese scammers exporting fake lead cash coins into the region. The most logical explanation would be that the French either bombarded the region with silver or that they deliberately undervalued silver to utilise Gresham's Law to push cash coins out so they would have full monetary control over French Indo-China, but as the Nguyễn Dynasty government was already subordinate to the French I suspect that a lot of small value silver coins entered the market.

In fact, the complexity and number of metals involved produced by government mints rather than merely suggested by government standards means that the Nguyễn Dynasty coinage system can best be compared to that of the Tokugawa Shogunate rather than the Manchu Qing Dynasty as like the Nguyễn the Tokugawa Shogunate had a government implemented multi-metallic coinage system and like the Nguyễn its government was highly centralised through strict military ⚔ rule from a new capital city lessening the importance of old regimes. But more on how the Japanese coinage system evolved later.

Let's first look at a cash coin system that was basically the opposite of that of the Nguyễn Dynasty, that of the Kingdom of Joseon. The Koreans only used a single cash coin inscription for a few centuries, this being the Sangpyeong Tongbo. Unlike the Qing the Kingdom of Joseon did not have any strong regional warlords and like the Qing, Nguyễn, and Tokugawa had adopted "the Daqian model-system". Meanwhile, the diversity of the Sangpyeong Tongbo was so intense that there are more varieties of Sangpyeong Tongbao cash coins in two (2) centuries than of the incredibly diverse and divergent Chinese numismatic charms that depict every day life, wishes, poetry, marriage, basically any small detail of the Chinese civilisation AND its religions, mythologies, and history OVER THE COURSE OF TWO (2) MILLENNIA. This can be explained that in daily life nothing is actually more important than money, as money is used for everything, everything one does, eats, wears, adorns, decorates, plays with, Etc. Is worth money and money is "the middle man between barter". Combine this with the fact that in Joseon multiple denominations, over fifty (50) mints, private production, different furnaces, accounting systems, Etc. existed which all contributed to this diversity. A single mint was reliant on many things and different quality cash coins circulated in Korea. Furthermore, every government agency, military unit, and provincial government had to manufacture its own Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins which only furthered this divide in production. Likely cash coins were also produced in weight and like in Vietnam, China, and Japan the introduction of the "Daqian" proved irreversible despite the failure of the largest denomination(s).

The Koreans "modernised" their currency system with first the introduction of token coinages based on the Mun and machine-struck cash coins and with the creation of the Korean Yang (read: "Korean Tael"). After this introduction they stopped producing cash coins altogether but by the time of the Korean Empire and the Korean Won cash coins were still in circulation after two (2) decades and had to be pegged. This is no different than the French Indo-Chinese situation, as the French government halted production of their own cash coins slightly after the turn of the century and cash coins remained in circulation and officially pegged. The only difference here being that the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty still continued producing them until the 1940's.

Now let's look at the coinage systems of the Tokugawa Shogunate during the 19th (nineteenth) century. Vietnamese nationalists were very much aware of the developments in Japan, in fact, many Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese at the time looked at the Japanese as they were modernising and publishing their changes in Classical Chinese. In fact, people often seem to forget how interconnected the Chinese civilisation was (referencing to the Chinese cultural countries and not the modern concepts of "China"). The Japanese actually pioneered the "Daqian" before the Qing did with the 100 (one-hundred) Mon coin, the same maximun as the Koreans, meanwhile the Qing had 1000 Wén cash coins and the Nguyễn had 1 "String of cash coins". The Japanese actually had a failed experiment with a 10 Mon cash coin earlier which was rejected by the market.

Another thing is that the Japanese had parallel government coinages of copper-alloy cash coins, silver, and gold coinages, this was also the case with the Nguyễn Dynasty with the biggest difference being that the Japanese coinages were all independent from each other, they each had their own weight systems and circulated based on them. By contrast the silver cash coins, non-cash coins, plaques, plates, and sycees of the Nguyễn Empire were valued sometimes in their own denominations, sometimes in weights, and sometimes in cash coins (Văn, Mạch, and Quán). These were all produced at the same time and as far as I can find a very small amount of them were still being produced under the Bảo Đại Emperor indicating that the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty was either competing with the Piastre or supplementing it.

The Japanese immediately abolished the production of cash coins in favour of a Mexican Peso-based system after the Meiji Revolution and the abolition of the Tokugawa Shogunate. But during the Bakumatsu the old currency system already collapsed, trade with foreigners decreased the amounts of gold and increased the amounts of silver in Japan. Furthermore, the Tokugawa Shogunate allowed for the domains to produce their own local coinages. While the Tokugawa Shogunate was a highly centralised military dictatorship almost in the form of a modern dictatorship in a pre-modern era, it actually consisted of a few dozen different countries under a "6 (six) months hostage" system and the central government maintained a monopoly on coinage. The moment they allowed the domains to make their own currencies and many did using "the main inscription" the Tokugawa Shogunate issued a new inscription and the Japanese currency market became chaotic.

The Japanese at some point also attempted to introduce iron cash coins (like the Qing did during the Taiping Rebellion), but like the hundreds of times iron cash coins have been tried before this failed. Meanwhile the Revival Lê Dynasty and later the Nguyễn Dynasty produced zinc cash coins because the populace was too poor for the copper-alloy cash coins. On the side of diversity the Cảnh Hưng cash coins had 700+ (seven-hundred plus) types, so the Nguyễn inherented a complex system and continued with it as under the Minh Mạng Emperor large cash coins possibly based on those from the Cảnh Hưng period were made. The only cash coins ever rejected by the Nguyễn were the Tây Sơn Rebel Dynasty coins which were accepted at 2 (two) to 1 (one). The diversity of cash coins likely occurred because of the fact that the cash coins were all based on a singular model.

The Japanese likely abolished cash coins as a part of consolidating all their currencies into a European model where all coins followed the European designs but with decorations from Chinese civilisation starting the trend of "Dragon dollars" also adopted by the Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese. Though the French were largely responsible for the production of silver coinages in the Nguyễn after the two (2) French protectorates were established over it.

Comparison with this Socialist Republic of Việt Nam during the 2010's.

Something to note about cash coins is that they were quite commonly placed in the mouths of corpses, why am I bringing this up? Well, I met a Chinese man on Wikimedia Commons that is interested in documenting and learning about Chinese and Vietnamese cash coins but wouldn't ever touch one with six (6) foot tweezers because of this, he is just so disgusted by them as objects but has a strong interest in their as historical objects. It isn't unlikely that the Nguyễn Dynasty government was producing cash coins in order to provide the people with religious items, that the "Value ten" became ceremonial like "Ghost 👻 money", this would certain fall into the belief of Vietnamese historians that "cash coins were financially irrelevant and only symbolic" under French rule, but little contemporary evidence backs any of this up.

In the modern Socialist Republic of Việt Nam a similar market liquidity issue occurred. I hate several White Australian friends that visited Vietnam and one thing they did was always complain about scammers and understandably so, in Vietnamese and Chinese culture scamming "outsiders" (while especially foreigners that look different also conationals that are from "out of town") is normal and they would often pay 800.000 Đồng for something that cost a native perhaps only 2.000 Đồng.

The ones that actually spoke Vietnamese would talk about how their scammers would assume they couldn't understand them and exclaim their scams in success to random strangers. What I found curious was what they called "the shop change scam", they all faced different scams and price hikes but this one was constant and the one most annoying according to many of them, whenever they entered a supermarket they paid for stuff but instead of change they received candy and if they demanded their money the cashiers would only offer them these small candies. Vietnamese people were also complaining about this, and as supermarket employees have no incentives to scam foreigners this was most peculiar. Apparently the smallest denominations, the 200 Đồng, 500 Đồng, and 1000 Đồng were slowly but surely disappearing from circulation. Vietnamese people use these banknotes as offerings to the deceased like cash coins were before and many have demanded for the government to print more of these, but the government hasn't done so in decades, so they remained in general circulation until they naturally depleted. This is likely the same scenario as with cash coins.

I know several people in Hanoi that have large stacks of 200 Đồng and 500 Đồng banknotes that they sell at huge profits for people that wish to go to funerals and cemeteries. The market value of these small denomination banknotes have simply gone up as they become more scarce.

Like the Nguyễn Dynasty the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has to provide for market liquidity but if these small denominations have almost no value then they would actively lose money printing them, the 200 Đồng was worth less than half a Euro-cent at this point. What is ironic is that a currency called the "Đồng" ("Copper (coins)") actually only contains banknotes, coins were simply an unsustainable investment for the government and were thus dropped. The government of the Nguyễn Empire likely faced similar issues with the cost of producing cash coins being much higher than their benefits to the market.

I suspect that at some point the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty decided to cut down on cash coin production for the sake of cost benefit, however, unlike the modern day Socialist Republic of Vietnam the Nguyễn Dynasty never really halted this. They still produced cast cash coins because they were cheaper, the machine-struck cash coins were a very small value and mass produced.

Differing market forces for copper and silver.

One thing I noted is that the machine-struck Bảo Đại Thông Bảo cash coins contained a lot of zinc relative to earlier cash coins and were "visibly yellow", their function was likely to supplement the slowly disappearing zinc cash coins, but the others likely served functions akin to "half-cents" commonly found in Europe and European colonies at the time. The exchange rate between the Sapèque and the Piastre wasn't something that was determined once and set forever like was intended in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, it was something that changed monthly in the French Protectorates of Annam and Tonkin based on their respective Resident-Superiors' orders. This showed that the prices between the silver Piastre and the copper-alloy cash coins changed rapidly.

One thing to note about money-changers is that they would often scam (Vietnamese) people because of the confusing exchange rates, as White people didn't really use any cash coins. Their rates often dictated how much cash coins were actually valued at and the French colonial administration just had to follow. Of course, the French didn't want to relinquish their control over the currencies to anyone so they tried to maintain as much control as possible. Banks largely replaced the roles of money-changers, but money-changers still offered services like the stringing of cash coins.

While researching the Qianpu and Qianzhuang in the Manchu Qing Dynasty I noticed some important differences with the Vietnamese system, namely that the Vietnamese had way more Qianpu in their cities but no equivalent of Qianzhuang that issued Zhuangpiao. This can be for one because of the fact that the Vietnamese financial sector wasn't as developed, I know that later the French imposed a monopoly on the production of banknotes, this meant that the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty legally wasn't allowed to issue paper money in "their own two (2) countries", this is in fact something that was listed as a grievance in the Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945. So when the Vietnamese finally did start to have a developed financial sector they weren't allowed to produce their own banknotes. This actually made them equal with Korra and vastly different from the complex paper money systems of the Manchu Qing Dynasty (Zhuangpiao) and the Tokugawa Shogunate (Hansatsu).

The banknotes that circulated in French Indo-China until the Khải Định period also looked very much like "Traditional Chinese banknotes" with Chinese dragons, Traditional Chinese characters, and their overall style and layout. The other side of the banknotes fully looked French with localisations. This means that there was a conscious effort by the French to make their currency appear like they belonged to something produced by Chinese civilisation. Of course, these banknotes were exclusively denominated in piastres and not in cash coins.

Silver and gold coins of the Nguyễn Dynasty under French domination.

While researching this I actually came across some information that makes a lot of sense in context, namely: "Medallic Coinage: The Bao Chien Issues are normally encountered with small holes used for attaching silk threads tassels as these were given as awards of various services. Unholed example command a moderate premium. ~ Krause Publication” – Numista. This confirms that the silver and gold coinages under French domination were in fact Sapèques d'Honneur ("Cash coins of honour"). This makes a lot of sense as the Imperial Chinese (including the Imperial Vietnamese) had a medal system somewhat akin to the Europeans based on cash coins and these were often made of precious metals. In fact, this would make more sense than the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty continuing to produce silver coinage for circulation as the French dumped large amounts of it into the French Indo-Chinese economy so the White population would be able to do business without relying on the native cash coinages. The inscription of these silver coins was usually "Treasure Mirror" rather than "Circulating Treasure" which might indicate that they were something to be admired rather than to circulate.

Under French rule the Nguyễn Dynasty introduced many European-style medals while keeping the traditional Chinese-style awards system, often by introducing "European elements" to them like a ribbon for the Sapèque d'Honneur while keeping the basic designs the same, furthermore, medals existed in the shapes of Vietnamese gongs and tallies / plaques among other designs, more often than not these things look like Vietnamese numismatic charms (a system nearly identical to Chinese numismatic charms) but with ribbons. This is actually a good measure to explain the continued production of the silver and gold (cash) coinages until 1945.

Control Vs. Market liquidity.

Now that we've identified what all the Nguyễn Dynasty coinages over the value of 10 Văn under French domination were let's look at what the value of the low cash coins could have been, namely, how possible would it have been that cash coins were purely ceremonial as the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia implies. This is not unrealistic, in 1911 or 1912 the Republic of China 🇹🇼 completely did away with cash coins altogether, well, the production of them as cash coins remained in circulation in China until the Cultural Revolution (or perhaps earlier with the Great Leap Forward). The Vietnamese cash coins were pushed out of the market by aluminum coins denominated in "Xu" (sometimes spelled "Su"), while the Chinese issued "10 Wén copper coins" called "Đồng tiền" (Tongqian), these large 1 cent / 10 cash copper-alloy coins were debased relative to the value of cash coins, but were allowed to circulate due to their uniformity and high quality (being machine-struck and consistent, as opposed to the cast cash coins that mostly circulated), unlike the Vietnamese the Chinese issued banknotes at this era (and a large number, third only to the American Free Banking Era at number two and Russia at number one), by contrast, the French retained their monopoly on paper currency and even issued banknotes denominated in "cents" so cash coins likely co-circulated with them. In the Republic of China 🇹🇼 cash coins weren't produced anymore but local governments accepted them (alongside sycees) until sometime during the 1920's and 1930's. The Manchu Qing Dynasty even abolished the Confucian examination system before the Nguyễn Dynasty did so, so the Chinese already had a trend of moving away from Chinese Civilisation before the Nguyễn did.

The difference likely being, in the case of coinages, that the Chinese had copper-alloy subsidiary coinages but so did the French Indo-Chinese Piastre. Namely the 1 (one) cent and later also the ½ cent, this ½ cent coin was issued during the 1930's and probably had the same relative value to the smallest Bảo Đại Thông Bảo machine-struck cash coins as the 1 cent had to the biggest (cast) ones. Plus I'm not sure if the French accepted cash coins directly or if they had to be changed through money-changers. Imperial China exclusively produced copper-alloy cash coins but often only accepted taxes in silver, I know that the Nguyễn Dynasty actually accepted their copper-alloy cash coins for taxes based on their nominal value, at least during the 1860's.

Now let's compare colonial French Indo-China to Colonial Taiwan. "After Taiwan being ceded to Japan by China in 1895, the new ruler prohibited those two silver coins from circulation. Most of the coins were then melt or used as bottoms, earrings or other women's accessories by the natives. Therefore they are very difficult to get in today, especially the latter one. Those coins we can found in today usually have a soldering spot on their centers or edges, and the conditions are also very poor." - Stephen Tai (Mar.13, 1998, Charm.ru). This means that the Japanese in order to have control over the natives immediately abolished the Qing Dynasty coinage in Taiwan and banned their circulation, meanwhile the Korean Empire, which was a Japanese protectorate, was still allowed to let its old coinages ciruculate, so we can assume that the Nguyễn Dynasty, as a protectorate, was much closer to Korea in this respect than to Taiwan.

The Westernisation of Vietnamese currency.

In the fashion of Lê Minh Khải's (Liam Kelley's) approach at looking at "The Westernisation of mundane thought" in Vietnam let's look at another example of such an event, the adoption of the term "Xu". The word "Xu" comes from the French word "Sou" for 5 (five) cents but is commonly translated as "penny", this is similar to the Malay word for money being "Duit" (Du-it) from the Dutch word "Duit" (the smallest value Dutch coin). But the first (1st) feature-lenght film of the Nguyễn Dynasty period was called "Một đồng kẽm tậu được ngựa" ("One zinc cash coin for a horse") but is commonly translated as "A penny for a horse". I thought that the word "penny" here came from the French translation of the title but according to the French-language Wikipedia these are the titles:

"Dans les années 1920, un groupe d'intellectuels vietnamiens fonda la Huong Ky Film Company à Hanoï. Ils produisirent des documentaires sur les funérailles de l'empereur Khải Định et l'accession au trône de Bảo Đại. Ils réalisèrent aussi le film muet Một đồng kẽm tậu được ngựa (A Penny for a Horse). Les premiers films parlant furent produits entre 1937 et 1940, avec Trọn với tình (True to Love), Khúc khải hoàn (The Song of Triumph) et Toét sợ ma (Toét's Scared of Ghosts) par le studio Asia Film Group de Hanoï, avec la participation de l'artiste Tám Danh. Le Vietnam Film Group, mené par Trần Tấn Giàu produisit Một buổi chiều trên sông Cửu Long (An Evening on the Mekong River) et Thầy Pháp râu đỏ (The Red-Bearded Sorcerer). Deux autres films, Cánh đồng ma (The Ghost Field) et Trận phong ba (The Storm), furent réalisés en 1937 et 1938 à Hong Kong avec des acteurs et dialogues vietnamiens, mais ils furent des échecs commerciaux."

This could be because of the fact that Wikipedia's tend to be Anglocentric due to the dominant position of the English language, but I assume that the likely translation of this film was "sou", or perhaps not. As a copper-alloy cash coin was worth 4~6 zinc cash coins the term "Sou" might have been a good parallel.

According to Luongngocanh.net silver cash coins were also strung: "Khoảng thế kỷ mười chín, tiền xu bằng bạc với khối lượng cao nhất là 40g, nếu như xâu 25 đồng lại thì có độ nặng lên đến một ký. Được chia thành Tiền – Lạng – Phân." with silver cash coins being strung into strings of 25 (twenty-five) pieces. This of course wasn't the case for the silver French Indochinese Piastre coins. This means that "Xu" likely only referred to the copper-alloy coins. The first instance of the term "Xu" being used on money was in 1939, this means that the term had been the mainstream Vietnamese term for cents for a period of years already at this point.

Now let's look at how the term "Xu" would have gotten into the Vietnamese language and why it stayed. The term "Sou" (plural: "Sous") comes from the Latin word "Solidus" meaning "Solid" as in a coin made from "Solid gold", by contrast the Đồng (Chinese for "Copper") refers to the small denomination cash coins from Imperial China. So in an odd twist of language a small copper-alloy cash coin worth less than a penny in modern purchasing power is 100 (one-hundred) solid gold coins worth hundreds of Dollars in modern purchasing power, each. But linguistics is never logical and it more has to do with history and contemporary perception than any actual etymological origins. The "Đồng" (Copper) as of 2021 is also ironically one of the few (if not the only) currency that contains no copper at all.

The origin of the term "Xu" is likely "a bourgeois term" as the common Annamite primarily paid with cash coins it were the wealthier merchants and bourgeoisie that had contact with the French that lilely learned of the term "Sou", which was a popular name for the 5 (five) cents coin at the time, likely for the French Indo-Chinese 1 (one) cent coin as it was significantly larger than its French European equivalent and a Mexican Peso was around five times (5x) as valued, so it would make sense that the French would view the French Indo-Chinese centimes as "sous" rather than as "centimes".

Then the French interacted with the indigenous bourgeoisie and introduced the term, unlike money 💵 words and phrases do tend to "trickle down" as people always seek to be perceived as "wealthy" and will do anything to gain social status by emulating those they perceive to have a higher social status as them. This plus the fact that there likely wasn't really another word for "cent" in Vietnamese at the time so they had to invent one, likewise Chinese people from Guangzhou had a different idea of what a "cent" should be called than Chinese people in Beijing hence different terms existed.

Cash coins were probably perceived to be "cent equivalents" by the Europeans who viewed the silver standard-based (until 1930) and later gold standard-based (from 1930) French Indo-Chinese Piastre as more valuable than the French Franc and the smaller coins of the Nguyễn Dynasty were somewhat physically larger than the French 1 (one) cent coins from that period. Of course, different types of cash coins existed and they were in reality thousands of different currencies traded on their weight, fineness (copper content), quality, exposure, Etc. Cash coins were naturally prone to chaos as thousand (1000) year old Song Dynasty cash coins still circulated until the mid-20th (twentieth) century alongside more modern cash coinanes of varying qualities and weights, Etc. The French hoped to create order in this naturally chaotic system by supplementing them with common sense small and large denominations.

Control is the most important factor here.

When I was younger I have always hated the fact that the British picked 1997 as "the end of the British Empire" because of the handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China. When the British leased the New Territories from the Manchu Qing Dynasty this was done as a century long lease that would expire while the Island of Hong Kong was indefinitely given to the British. Until the 1950's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern-Ireland was a superpower and exercised its powers as such, following the independence of India and the slow decolonisation of Africa and elsewhere the British lost their military might. The government of the People's Republic of China threatened to cut Hong Kong's water supply a few years before the handover and eventually the British were forced into handing the territory back, they tried negotiating for an independent Hong Kong or to keep the territory's namesake island but the People's Republic of China demanded all and threatened the entire functioning of Hong Kong. Like the Russians when they lost to the Japanese the British couldn't have easily transported the supplies they needed across the globe, if Russia had a major fleet at Vladivostok they wouldn't have lost to the Japanese, if the British still controlled areas around Hong Kong or still had the military might they once had they could have negotiated better terms. But in the end the Communist Chinese negotiated the entirety of Hong Kong with "honour-based restrictions", which if the British understood Chinese history knew that the PRC would never keep, and the British were completely impotent to negotiate anything more than just "keeping face".

This is what having no control looks like, the British effectively lost too much control to maintain an Empire. This is what the Nguyễn Dynasty had in its dynamics with the French.

The Nguyễn initially held home rule in the French Protectorates of Annam and Tonkin but gradually lost more power to the French, French Indo-China was first (1st) and foremost an economic colony so the French wanted to have complete control over the currency to control French Indo-China's economy. By creating arbitrary exchange rates they could manipulate the cash coins still circulating in the territories to their own advantage, but the market didn't always responded as the French wanted so gaining actual control was much more difficult than anticipated.

After all these years I finally understand why the British proclaimed the end of the British Empire with the handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China I no longer hate the 1997 end date or think of it as arbitrary, it makes perfect sense, especially since Hong Kong was one of the most economically important cities IN THE WORLD, and no matter how much the British tried they couldn't keep a square inch of land, losing the New Territories and Kowloon seemed normal, but the loss of the island of Hong Kong can be described as nothing less than "theft through pressure", the British government was impotent even under their "Iron Lady". They fought for the Falkland Islands but couldn't keep Hong Kong, their Empire truly wasn't global anymore and the sun finally set on it the day Hong Kong was handed over to the People's Republic of China.

So too did the French need to be able to influence every level of French Indo-Chinese society which proved difficult with a general population reluctant to adopt the French currency. The French simply couldn't exercise control over the cash coins-based lower end of the monetary market, they tried several times with various types of cash coins and failed. But likewise the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty couldn't really exercise its control over the Vietnamese economy as its own attempts at creating cash coins constantly failed the only success would come when the Japanese pressure pushed Gresham's Law to an extreme when the Vichy French introduced new zinc and later aluminium coins, this also occurred in the rest of Eurasia and Northern Africa during World War II, so global factors ended this rather than any internal policies.

Now the above almost makes it read like there was some sort of struggle between the French Indo-Chinese and Nguyễn Dynasty government for control of the currency, but in reality from the 1890's the entire government of the Nguyễn Dynasty was almost directly appointed by the French Resident-Superior of Annam and the traditional mints of the Nguyễn Dynasty could only operate based on a budget prepared for them by the French Indo-Chinese national budget as the Annamese and Tonkinese protectoratea which produced these cash coins had their entire budgets mandated to them by the Government-General of French Indo-China.

Nay, the real struggle was between the authorities and the private money-changers, the money-changers exploited the chaotic cash coins system and many Vietnamese people distrusted the French-made coins because the money-changers always scammed them using these coins. In the end a poorly built financial infrastructure for the poor made effective monetary policy impossible without including cash coins. This is also why the French made no mention of cash coins at all after 1945 and why the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam immediately wanted to get rid of them, cash coins effectively maintained the chaotic and disorganised nature of the Vietnamese market and in times of scarcity they only made exploitation worse.

While I personally love cash coins I can recognise why all Chinese civilisation countries immediately got rid of them the moment the opportunity presented itself, standardising the hopelessly chaotic cash coins market was a near impossible task that proved itself to be much harder at any attempt at reforming it, silver currency was easily reformed as the chaotic and unstandard nature of sycees made them less convenient, but cash coins as such a small denomination were in every level of society and cash coins of the same series by even the same mints always had extremely varying qualities and mass-forgery, government debasement, and various metals circulating only made the issue even worse to solve. The government of the Democratic Republic of it Vietnam was truly brilliant in introducing a metal even more worthless than zinc in order to push them out of the market, so did the French upon their return and after centuries of trying cash coins could be removed from the monetary market. Note that during the 1300's the Vietnamese government introduced paper money and ordered death and a complete confiscation of property for anyone daring to circulate cash coins and even this wasn't enough. The French simply wouldn't ever have been able to push cash coins out of the market and World War II presented the opportunity to do so and all sides immediately took it. This is because no government can control a chaotic monetary market and the Vietnamese have tried for centuries and failed for centuries, the French kept failing because of the chaotic market and only a global war could bring order to the French Indo-Chinese monetary market.

This also explains why during the Bảo Đại period the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty insisted on continuing the "10 Văn" denomination as it sent the signal "the government of the Nguyễn Dynasty will not accept zinc cash coins for anything less than this number" in order to bring more order to the chaotic market, having different types of copper-alloy cash coins was likely seen as preferable over having zinc cash coins circulate.

Why the navigational template is so difficult to create.

The navigational template needs to incorporate cash coins based on their value relative to the French Indo-Chinese cash coins to "be easy to understand" for the readers and / or re-users of Wikimedia Commons, they should be able to understand all that is written above in a very simple and short navigational template that is both easy to navigate and understandable for those that have never seen, read, or have heard anything related to the French Indo-Chinese Piastre and cash coins in general. This is something that cost me years of research but I was able to do for pre-modern Chinese currencies, this is something I managed to do for pre-modern Korean currencies, yet it is difficult for French Indo-Chinese currency system(s). This is a challenge that I want to complete so others won't have these same questions without answers, it should be able to be conveyed in a simple navigational template that is detailed enough to showcase these complexities.

Original publication 📤

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Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:52, 1 September 2021 (UTC) (Original draft e-mail 📧 page title for future 🔮 reference: “Piastre.40. ”.).


Naming scheme(s)

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Potential names for the categories for the coins, "1 cent, French Indochina (YEARS)", "1 cent, YEARS (French Indochina)", or perhaps "1 cent (French Indochina), YEARS". Note that "Piastre de Commerce" (Dutch: Handelspeso; English: Trade Peso) is "a format" rather than "a denomination".

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