Ecu circulation in the US

Hyperion · April 3, 2011 12:34AM

did these ever see circulation as silver dollars in the colonial US like the 8 reales did?

having problems finding online sources indicating this is the case.

Andres · April 3, 2011 10:07AM

Louisiana was part of France untill 1803 , when Napoleon Bonaparte sold it to the United States.
no doubt that Ecus were part of the monetary system in those days.
John Law introduced french paper ECU currency in 1716 in Louisiana.
Louisiana was much bigger in the old days, roughly half the size of the USA today.

skingspan · April 3, 2011 10:24AM

No idea but they are definitely cool coins. One of my collecting goals this year is to add one to my collection.

coinkat · April 3, 2011 11:31AM

Some would say Louisiana is big- the rest of the country is small

In all seriousness, I do not believe many of these circulated in North America

7Jaguars · April 3, 2011 1:32PM

Weren't these allowed to circulate until 1857 essentially on a value per weight basis?

ProofArtworkonCircs · April 3, 2011 2:44PM

I think they circulated in the U. S. and that the mint had an official value for them. In my experience they are a rather common coin. I ended up with 3 of them.

spoon · April 3, 2011 7:15PM

I was tempted to ask this same question a couple weeks ago! I was working on a paper dealing with early American law & policy and ran across a few scant mentions of the coin during research, but was in such a frenzied blur that I never had a chance to follow up. I wonder if we might get a better response from the Lightside forum, with their colonial experts?

Based on what little I know, and this may be wrong, they didn't really circulate much here. Some came in bulk as payment for trade, but those usually went right back out. I vaguely recall hearing that around the time of the battle of Yorktown the French supplied us with money, in the form of ecus, that was used to pay the troops. I'm fuzzy on that, though, and in any case not sure if the grunts were handed the coins or more likely some scrip backed by them. I don't think there were very many of these circulating hand to hand in New Orleans either.. remember, a good chunk of its history was Spanish owned and trade large and small was more likely carried out in their colonial currency.

I'm guessing, whether a west Pennsylvania farmer or Boston dockworker or folks in coastal Carolina.. most people would probably look at you funny if you tried paying with an ecu in the late 1700s. And all the usual statements about colonial money apply - we didn't have much hard currency period. Most transactions were based on barter or local credit and scrip filled the gap for larger and longer distance transactions.

I just checked the contemporary newspaper databases and can't find any positive matches at all (plenty of false hits!)... I know there were a few, mostly conversion rates, but these databases are really hit or miss on search queries, especially short, non-English terms.

Great coin, btw!

FilthyBroke · April 3, 2011 9:24PM

With all the land that the French colonized over here, it would be hard to say that there weren't French coins circulating, too. I doubt they reached anywhere near the extent of the reales, though.

But you're right about it being hard to locate concrete evidence online. I recall an article about the Cornell hoard (found in Williamsburg VA) mentioning Ecus.

1jester · April 4, 2011 8:57AM

An early version of the European Currency Unit.

Andres · April 5, 2011 9:32AM

transport ECU's from France to the new world

Ecu circulation in the US

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