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JCH22
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JCH22
Posts: 344 ✭✭✭✭
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If we want to go back even further in time we can go to the last 15'th century when in 1494 when The Treaty of Tordesillas was signed by both the Empires of Spain and Portugal, ratified by then Pope Alexander Vl, who established lines of demarcation between the two Catholic countries. In effect splitting the world in 1/2, half for Spain and half for Portugal, for each to exploit by any means in return for spreading the Catholic faith. A number of papal Bulls were issued redrawing the world as new discoverys were made and Portugal was awarded most of Asia.
More importantly they controlled the very rich China/Japan silk trade. Both countries hated each other yet Japan needed the silks for their kimonos, silk actually became its own quasi currency in Japan, and Japanese artisans made remarkable kimonos with the fabric. In return the Chinese would accept the only Japanese currency they desired, that being Japanese silver, which Japan was loaded with. Huge discoverys of silver were made near the city of Oda and at one point in history Japan accounted for 1/3rd of the worlds silver.
Silver for silk. It was such a rich bounty the Empire's of Spain and Portugal constantly bickered over the control of the trade. This period also saw the rise of the Jesuit Order of Catholicism because they alone had mastered the Asian languages needed to trade and had vast knowledge of theater and world wide economics of the era. Knowledge they guarded jealously.
The Liaison between the Jesuits and the Feudal Japanese war lords became strained when the English started sailing into these waters and the Japanese daimyos learned these secrets and the exploitation of the Catholic nations in the new world. That and the Catholics were aggressively converting Japanese to Catholicism which made the Shoguns and daimyos of the era suspicious eventually leading to banning Christianity outright and except for trade closed down Japan to foreigners.
This is when the Protestant English stepped in to fill the void and began enriching themselves by taking over the silk trade which eventually led to the demise of the Portuguese and Spanish Empires and the rise of the English one. The East India company becoming almost a powerful nation to itself. The monopoly of the Asian, silk, opium, gold, silver, slave, trades turned a small Island nation in the North Atlantic into a world-wide Juggernaut.
Yes, there are a few known chopmarked Bust Dollars, but they are quite rare and there are more fakes than genuine pieces. It's also difficult to determine how many were actually exported for use in China compared to the much more internationally familiar Portrait Eight Reales, but some certainly made it over and circulated. The best example is almost certainly the ex-Rose specimen:
To give some idea of the proportion of US Bust Dollars that were brought to China relative to other foreign silver, I'd point to the American trading vessel Rapid _ , which wrecked off of northwestern Australia in 1811 en route to Canton from Boston; while most of the estimated 280,000 silver crowns were recovered soon after, ~20,000 were rediscovered during excavations from 1979-82, including just 13 U.S. silver dollars (per Kleeberg’s _America’s Silver Dollars).
This is what happens when dudes wear wigs around.