User:Donald Trung/French Cochinchinese Sapèques

Target: Cochinchina piastre.  Published. --Donald Trung (talk) 23:36, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

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In the year 1868 the price for a lunch at a restaurant in rue Catinat in Saigon (present day Đường Đồng Khởi in Ho Chi Minh City) cost one piastre while a dinner with wine cost 1 piastre and 25 cents.<ref name="Lemire">{{cite web|url= http://www.historicvietnam.com/saigon-cholon-in-1868/|title= Saigon-Cholon in 1868, by Charles Lemire.|date=29 December 2015|accessdate=4 March 2019|author= timdolinghcmc@gmail.com|publisher= First published in the 1869 journal Annales des voyages, de la géographie, de l’histoire et de l’archéologie, edited by Victor-Adolphe Malte-Brun, Charles Lemire’s article “Coup d’oeil sur la Cochinchine Française et le Cambodge” gives us a fascinating portrait of Saigon-Chợ Lớn less than 10 years after the arrival of the French.|language=en}}</ref>

The main currency of French Cochinchina (like that of Đại Nam) in the early colonial period was the Mexican peso, an average silver Mexican peso weighed 26.94 grams and at the time the exchange rate fluctuated between 5.37 and 6.30 French francs on the private marker, while the French government used 5.55 francs to 1 peso as the official exchange rate. Mexican pesos with Chinese chopmarks were also accepted at lower values in Saigon because of a large number of Chinese counterfeit pesos being produced. During this period Chinese merchants became more skilled in figuring out which Mexican pesos were fake while Chinese fakes also became less easy to be discovered. Other than Mexican pesos the population of French Cochinchina used silver sycees which usually had a value between 16 and 18 Mexican pesos (or between 80 and 100 French francs) a piece, these sycees were often rectangular in shape and only rarely diverging values, the production of these silver sycees was mostly in the hands of the government of the Nguyễn dynasty. During this era gold coins and sycees were extremely rare on the French Cochinchinese market.

The general exchange rate between silver French coins and Annamese sapèques was not favourable for the French as Cochinchinese money changers used an exchange rate of 8 tiền in sapèques per franc, which placed a disadvantage to the franc as a tiền was only worth 10 cents thus losing 20 cents per franc in the exchange. Meanwhile the exchange rates for Mexican pesos to sapèques were rather favourable.

During the colonial era in French Cochinchina Chinese sapèques (known as lý) were exclusively used as casino tokens by gambling houses and weren't used for other purchases unless trade was being conducted with Qing China. The general conversion rate was 1000 lý = 1 lạng = 7.50 French francs. The sapèques which circulated at the time of French Cochinchina were made from zinc and had a very distinctive square centre hole allowing for them to be strung into strings of 1000 zinc sapèques or 600 copper-alloy sapèques, these strings were known as quán tiền (貫錢) in Vietnamese and as ligatures or chapalets in French. Each string is further subdivided into 10 tiền consisting of 60 sapèques, these coins were valued in their quantity rather than in weight. These coins usually featured the reign or era title of the reigning Nguyễn monarch and were extremely poorly manufactured with bad alloys causing the strings to often break with many sapèques breaking resulting in considerable losses for their owners due to their brittleness. Charles Lemire described the heavy nature and difficult mobility of strings of sapèques as "a currency worthy of Lycurgus of Sparta" and non numerantur, sed ponderantur ("not made for the countries it governeth"). Around the time that Charles Lemire entered Saigon around 1868 the presence of sapèques in circulation in Cochinchina has become less common but it was stated that the locals still preferred them over the European-style copper and silver currency introduced by the French. In rural areas of French Cochinchina sapèques were even more preferred over the piastre. The sapèque was especially beneficial for people who both earn and spend little money as sapèques could purchass items which were worth less than a cent, or even half, a quarter or a sixth of a cent due to their small denominations. The products described by Lemire which were of a value smaller than a cent in the year 1868 include an areca nut, betel leaves, tobacco, cigarettes, a single cup of tea, a single slice of pineapple, an orange fruit, a jackfruit, a fragment of sugar cane, a spoonful of fish sauce, or a palm leaf hat. These products were all purchasable with a small number of sapèques which is why these coins continued to be preferred in less wealthy areas.

Because of the inconveniences associated with sapèques the European population of French Cochinchina found the introduction of the Cochinchina piastre to be essential for their daily payments and purchases.