Portugal is over there on the western edge of the Iberian peninsula
in southern Europe. It is a small country, a bit smaller than the
state of Indiana with getting toward twice as many people. I find
that my almost adequate Spanish allows me to adequately read Portuguese,
but the spoken language sounds radically different and when eavesdropping
on a Brazilan conversation I can only pick out a few words here and there:
coracao, luta, futbol.
The country is about 210 miles from northern tip to southern
toe, a maximum of about 65 miles wide. There is a northern region,
a central, and a southern, in which are 18 districts. Two groups
of islands far out in the Atlantic, the Azores and the Madeiras, are "autonomous
regions." The big town up north is Porto. Lisbon is in the
middle.
There were hominids in Portugal before the arrival of our species
from somwhere else. A brief search of the web gave me ambiguous references
to possible finds of homo erectus bones that people are arguing about,
and a mention of a "neanderthal-sapiens hybrid" that the mainstream anthropologists
seem not even to be deigning to attack, the assertion being so far from
current orthodoxy, which is firmly "us and them" regarding neanderthals.
There were lots of homo erectus in Africa 500,000 years ago,
so there is no good reason why they shouldn't have been in Iberia, but
evidently they are not finding much in the way of acheulian handaxes in
Portugal. Most of us are not collecting paleolithic stone anyway,
are we?
No doubt about neanderthals though. They were there.
In fact, it is currently hypothesized, romantically if I may so characterize,
that the "last stand" of the neanderthals, so to speak, was on Gibraltar,
not too far from the border in Spain.
"We" showed up in Portugal more than 50,000 years ago it seems,
and were making painted and chipped art on rocks 20,000 years ago or more.
An article in Wikipedia asserts that genetic studies of currently living
Iberians show that a dominant factor in their heritage is over 20,000 years
old, and that Portugal actually served as source for the later dispersal
of those genes all over Europe.
From that point in time stone artifacts are known, becoming more
common in later periods, to the point at which I have been contacted by
more than one person in Portugal thinking to sell such things dug up in
their backyard so they tell me. What I have seen are pictures of
neolithic flakes, not the actual tools. In common "folk" tradition
they think of them as votive in some way, connected with a moon goddess,
but to me they are "obviously" trash from the stone tool manufacturing
process.
Mesolithic and neolithic stuff is found in Portugal, stone tools,
dolmens (large standing stones), rock paintings, pottery. There is
not a whole lot of it, Portugal was not a population center. Essentially
none is available in the "market." There is a fair amount of prehistoric
Iberian material, but almost all from what is now Spain. All of it
is export restricted these days.
Copper came into use around 4000 BCE, and gold at about the same
time. What you see first are copper imitations of stone tools: axes
resembling polished stone pieces, arrowheads shaped like flaked points.
One of the articles I read on the web asserted that Iberia was the second
earliest region of metalworking after the Balkans. In Europe that
is, east Asia started smelting at least a millennium earlier. There
is Bulgarian material of this sort available for collecting, but none from
Portugal that I am aware of.
Bronze came in during the first millennium BCE, brought to northern
Portugal by people the scientists are calling "proto-Celts." These
immigrants had horses and a class society of sorts, and in sum they pushed
aside and repressed the people who were there when they arrived.
They proceeded to do business, pleasure, and ritual with their buddies
up the Atlantic coast as far as Britain. Non-Celtic bronze cultures
later developed in the central and southern zones, perhaps in some way
imitative of the "proto-Celts," perhaps also brought in from Africa.
There was maritime activity as well, extensively by Phoenicians, to a lesser
degree by the Mycenaeans and Egyptians. It wasn't exactly commerce
that was going on, one doesn't find manufactured stuff from those culture
centers in Portugal. The foreigners came to load up raw material,
and eventually to colonize.
By the start of the iron age, around 1000 BCE, there were definitely
Phoenician settlements on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia. The
hinterland remained in the hands of the people who by that time are regarded
as full fledged Celts, accepted as indigenes, the memory of their ancient
conquests of the neolithic peoples forgotten.
For purposes of this narrative you want to note that Phoenician
Carthage, in Tunisia, was founded in the 9th century BCE. Carthage
became a major player in the western Mediterranean in succeeding centuries,
clashed with the Greeks in Sicily, and did a lot of business and settlement
in Iberia. But in all of the goings and comings that proceeded the
extreme west of Iberia, Portugal, was on the sidelines. No Phoenician
settlements have been found on that side of the border.
Perhaps the earliest major city in Iberia was Tartessos, on the
mouth of the Guadalquivir river in Spain near the Portuguese border.
It was a native town, whose chief product was tin, a strategic material
required for bronze manufacture, aquired either up in England or from alluvial
deposits nearby. The Phoenicians built their own city nearby.
They called it Gadir, the Romans later called it Gades, now it is called
Cadiz. Tartessos disappeared around 600 BCE and its site is unknown
today. Probably it was destroyed by the Phoenicians, possibly of
the Carthaginian flavor.
The 9th century also saw the beginning of building in the Lisbon
area. There is a myth that it was founded by the Phoenicians as "Alis
Ubbo" (Safe Harbor), and another that "Olissipo" was founded by Ulysses.
The truth seems to be that it was a small port, Celtic, native Iberian,
or mixed, doing business up the coast and with England for several hundred
years.
England never disappears from the story of Portugal. The
Portuguese have had relations with Britain from way back then until today.
When they needed help standing off an overweening Spain or France they
got it from the British.
In the 7th century BCE another wave of Celts came in from the
north. Meanwhile, far away in the east, the Phoenician city states
were incorporated into the Persian empire. Their resources expropriated
for the maintenance of that superstructure, the western colonies dwindled.
Some of the vacuum was occupied by Greeks, who built settlements on the
Mediterranean coast of Spain but never did much in Portugal.
By the 4th century BCE the names of individual tribes begin to
be mentioned in Greek writings. Among these were the Lusitani, who
lent their name to the later Roman province, and the Gallaeci, from whom
was named Gallicia. A number of cities were founded on the Portuguese
side in the Algarve region of the far south.
At that time the Phoenician element in Iberia was Carthaginian.
The Greek element was hard pressed. Rome was called in and responded
by way of Gaul. In the mid-3rd century BCE Roman troops were occupying
northeastern and central Spain and Carthage was gearing up for the Punic
wars, which were mainly fought in Iberia, and which they eventually lost.
Iberia (the Romans called it Hispania) became Roman.
Well, Portugal was only technically Roman in the 2ns century
BCE. Too far away, too hard to get to, too uncivilized. But
they pushed on in their Roman manner, doggedly, taking their time, founding
new cities, weaving webs of administration.
Now we get to the coins, or almost. There were a very few
Iberian coins struck in the pre-Roman period. The closest to Portugal
were the 3rd century BCE silver and copper coins of Gades (Cadiz).
Gades was a Phoenician city, or better put, Carthaginian. The coins
have Phoenician legends and are scarce or rare.
Coinage got a big boost when the Romans came. The Romans
liked to get their taxes paid in money. They encouraged the local
authorities to strike coins, and they did. All of these so-called
"Romano-Celtiberian" coins were made in cities in what is now Spain.
The coins are cute, with a rather distinctive artistic style that Picasso
must have been aware of, and legends sometimes in Latin, sometimes in an
evolved Phoenician called Oscan or Iberian.
At that time (2st century BCE) the Romans had Iberia divided
into two provinces: Hispania Citerior in the east and Hispania Ulterior
in the west. The Roman writ did not extend all the way to the Atlantic,
but rather faded off into the wild west that was to become Portugal.
The people there, called Lusitanians at the time, found themselves sometimes
in alliance with the Romans, sometimes opposed. By the middle of
that century the Romans decided to stop messing around and went into Lusitania
in force. After several decades the Romans were able to establish
a permanent presence and Lusitania became a part of Roman Hispania Ulterior.
But no coins. Not yet.
Julius Caesar was appointed to a quaestorship (finance director,
more or less) in Lusitania in 69 BC. Eight years later he was made
governor of Ulterior. He fought a number of battles against restive
natives, and in 60 BC was hailed as "Imperator" by his soldiers, allowing
him a formal "triumph" back in Rome, which built his position for his well
known later career.
Later, when Caesar was kicked out of Rome and "crossed the Rubicon,"
he went back to Hispania to begin the civil war that would end in his victory,
then his assassination, then more war, then the ascendency of Octavian,
who became Augustus and who transformed the wreckage of the old Republic
into the new entity that we have come to call the "Roman Empire."
It was during the reign of Augustus that some coins finally got
made in Lusitania. Augustus allowed local coins to be made all over
the empire, and there were more made in Spain in his time than at any other.
The two Portuguese towns to make coins were Ebora and Pax Julia.
The latter has turned into Beja in the southern region of Baixo Alentejo
(in Portuguese pronounce the "J" as in English rather than as in Spanish,
but soft - "zh" rather than "dj"). Pax Julian coins are rare.
Ebora is probably but not certainly modern Evora, also in the south but
further north, in Alto Alentejo. The uncertainty comes from the fact
that there were no less than five Iberian towns named Ebora in ancient
times, and all there is to go on is the coins themselves. And all
they say is "Ebora."
You look in Sear's book on Greek Imperial coins at the Spanish
coins of Augustus and you see all of these reasonable prices - 20 pounds,
35 pounds, the coin illustrated here is priced at 35 pounds. OK,
the prices are from 1982. Triple them if you will. I did when
I had one of those "helmeted sphinx" coins from Castulo a few months ago.
Sold an aVF for $120, a bit cheap perhaps. There are plenty of those
Castulos around, enough for everyone who might want one.
Ebora is a different story. I found only one piece offered
on the web when I looked. It was on a European Ebay, described as
"fair," there was a picture, it was terrible, I couldn't tell what it was.
And several other pieces reported sold on Ebay many months ago, cheap prices,
but no pictures, so who knows what they were. There's this guy who
puts coins on Ebay with any old description he pleases. He put up
a Tibetan gaden tanka described as a medieval Viking coin and sold it for
$40.00! Just for example.
My people found me a wonderful picture of an Ebora coin.
It comes from www.tesorillo.com, a beautiful site, you must look at it,
its in Spanish, but Spanish is one of the easy languages. Try it,
you'll like it.
Those are all of the ancient Portuguese coins. The Spanish
mints continued to make coins through the reign of Caligula. All
of them were closed during the time of Claudius and there were no more
Spanish issues until the Vandals came through.
In the recent past, I remember well, because I was there on the
scene, Portugal was one of those "who cares" countries for coin collecting.
It was a poor country with a dictator who kept all the money for himself
and his buddies. There was no mass base of coin collectors there,
so prices were low, even while rare stuff was impossible.
No longer the case, is that. Portugal has a solid middle
class these days, and some of them collect coins. The end of national
money in favor of the euro woke up a generation of potential collectors
as the stuff disappeared from public view. Overnight, more or less,
Portuguese coins moved from the junk bucket and the dusty box in the back
of the safe to dealer trays to gone again, this time into the collections
of the collectors.
Portuguese coins are kind of hot these days.
I was contacted immediately after the appearance of the last
article by a Mr. A. de Barros pointing out errors and omissions in my presentation.
He reminded me that the current "Redbook" or "Bible" of Portuguese numismatics
is by Gomes. I don't have it. I have Vaz, the previous standard.
It'll have to do for now. This series I'm writing is, after all,
a survey, not a corpus. Someone want to lend me a Gomes for a few
months?
Mr. de Barros pointed out that during the reign of first Roman
emperor Augustus coins were struck by several more Portuguese towns than
the two I mentioned. I got my references from Sear's Greek Imperial
Coins and their Values, a handy dandy 600 page beginners' book. He
got his from "La Moneda Hispana" by Alvarez Burgos. The town names
are: Baesuri, Balsa, Brutobriga, Dipo, Cetovion, Murtilis, Osonuba, Salacia,
Sirpens. There are supposed to be some others. The products
of these mints are extremely rare, one or two pieces each perhaps, sitting
in Portuguese museums. Potential for collectability is low to nil.
In the weeks after the last article was submitted two indisputable
Ebora coins showed up on Spanish Ebay. One, the legend in wreath
type pictured last time, went for about $110.00 in VG. Another, an
as or dupondius, had sacrificial implements, condition aG, went for about
$50.00.
I very much appreciate the input of readers. I am no kind
of expert, just a hack, I sit down and write these things on a tight schedule.
Any help has to lead to a better product. Thankyou all in advance.
Back to the narrative.
The Roman Empire was a polyglot assemblage of many different
political arrangements. Parts of it were conquered, other parts came
by dynastic inheritance, bequests, buyouts, even by application, as in
"please come in and run this country!"
The two provinces of the Iberian peninsula: Hispania Citerior
of the east and south, and Hispania Ulterior of the north and west, in
which was the region of Lusitania, part of which became Portugal.
All of Iberia was technically Roman by the time of Julius Caesar, though
the Roman presence in the far west, Portugal to be, was very light.
All of it was conquered, which meant that there were no governments there
that the Romans took seriously, only a bunch of "barbarians." The
Romans made treaties with them the same way the paleface Americans made
treaties with the Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries, which
is to say "tactically." The "treaties" were generally not considered
binding by the Romans who made them, ostensibly because the people they
made them with were too disorganized to keep their word, so why should
the Romans?
So the Romans moved in and set up Roman settlements all over
the Hispanias, outside of which the Indians, I mean Hispanians, huddled
in their rude huts and wandered around in the woods being wild. And
the administration was entirely Roman, no native puppet governments for
the overlords to hide behind, none needed. Iberia was considered
part of the core territory of Rome, if rather far flung at the edge.
How different from the situation in the east, where all of those little
kingdoms and city states would pull out their precedential documents of
the previous thousand years and wave them in the Roman's cleanshaven faces.
"Look," they would explain, "this is how we did it with the Persians, with
Alexander, with the Seleukids, do you want to deal, or do you want yet
another hard time?"
The directly administered core went through several monetary
reforms over the nearly five centuries of the Roman Empire in the west.
The first reforms were consolidative, the later ones were distributive.
During the reign of Augustus silver and gold production was limited
to two and then to a single mint, Lugdunum (Lyons) in Gaul. After
Augustus many local mints were closed and local coinage arrangements were
suppressed. By the end of the reign of Claudius there were only two
mints operating in the west. In succeeding centuries a number of
western mints opened and closed, many of them serving the needs of factions
in the various succession wars. As far as I can tell none of them
were in the Hispanias. That leads me to the conclusion, which I put
out here for refutation by the better informed, that no coins were struck
in the Iberian peninsula from about 40 CE to about 480 CE. More or
less, give or take a few decades, maybe.
It took a couple of centuries of mismanagement, several internal
wars, constant and growing pressure from outside to extinguish the imperial
government in the west. By the end of the 5th century CE most of
continental western Europe had been overrun by migrating tribes.
The migration was different from what we experience today. Back then
it was more like flocks of birds. All of them, the whole tribe, would
pick up and move. They're coming, they're coming, here they are.
What are we going to do?
The Romans tried all the usual gambits. They fought, they
negotiated, they expelled, they gave in with conditions, they bribed (all
those late Roman gold solidi, that's what they were for). Nothing
worked in the end. Europe became full of newcomers in the 5th and
6th centuries. The Romans were swamped, or at least the administration
was.
Waves of mostly Germanic migrants washed over Europe from the
Balkans to the Atlantic. Some, from the Roman point of view, were
nicer than others, but they were all rude, crude, foreign, and, eventually,
irresistable.
Two waves and a wavelet were pertinent to Iberia: the Vandals
and Alans, the Suevi, and the Visigoths.
The Vandals and Suevi were Germanic, and came from "up north."
The Alans were Iranian, and came from "east." During Roman imperial
times they were located east of the Rhine, the territory of the Suevi known
today as Swabia. All three groups crossed that river in 406 and continued
westward into Gaul. While the Vandals and their allies the Alans
got hung up in fighting with the Franks and Romans, the Suevi proceeded
south and west into Iberia, where they encountered a political vacuum,
the Roman administration having substantially broken down save for the
Mediterranean coast.
The Suevi passed through northern Spain all the way to Gallaecia,
which is modern Galicia and northern Portugal. They settled there,
declared fealty to Rome, and were granted "foederati" status, which means
what it sounds like, by the emperor Honorius. In practice the Romans
didn't do anything much for the Suevi, and the Suevi didn't do much for
Rome, but they were formal allies. The Suevi capital was the modern
city of Braga in northern Portugal.
There are Suevi coins, late 5th century gold solidi imitating
those of Honorius, a silver coin with the emperor's name obverse and that
of the Suevi king on reverse, early 6th century gold tremisses with reverse
types "evolved" from the Roman. They are all extremely rare, only
a few hundred Suevi coins of all types are known to exist.
Meanwhile, back in Gaul, the Vandals and Alans fought their way
through the Franks in Gaul and followed the Suevi south into Iberia, crossing
the Pyrennees in 409 CE. Like the Suevi, Vandals and Alans both were
assigned lands and declared foederati. About 15 years later, though,
the Visigoths showed up in Spain. They got there on their own but
had the blessing of Rome on the theory that the Visigoths were going to
take back Iberia for the empire. Thought the "foederated" Vandals
and Alans were holding it in trust for the glory of Rome. Sic transit,
etc.
Ha to that, at any rate. The Visigoths took most of Iberia
and kept it along with most of Gaul. They were no friends of Rome.
In Iberia most of the Alans and almost all of the Vandals were
driven south into North Africa, where they spread out along the coast.
The Vandals set up an administration in Carthage, did normal bureaucratic
things like pass laws, collect taxes, strike coins, until they were conquered
by the Byzantines about a hundred years later. In their heyday the
invaded Italy and sacked Rome in 455 CE. Their allies the Alans lost
their coherence and disappeared.
Back in Iberia the Visigoths consolidated their power, pushing
the Suevi into a shrinking northwestern domain and finally extinguishing
them in 585 CE. The name "Visigoth" is kind of interesting.
A contemporary Roman writer, Cassiodorus, interpreted "Ostrogoth" as "East
Goth" and Visigoth therefore as "West Goth." Apparently this usage,
though true, was not correct. "Ostro" supposedly meant "shiny," and
possibly refers to blond hair. "Visi" might refer to wisdom and/or
nobility. Never mind. Doesn't matter. Ostrogoths in Italy,
Visigoths in Spain.
In 507 the Franks drove the Visigoths out of Gaul, leaving them
only Iberia. The Visigoths set up their new capital in Barcelona
and then moved it to Toledo. They set up a bureaucratic government
in the broadly normal style: local administrators send written reports
to center, said reports filed, center issues orders, etc. There were
religious problems both internally and externally, interference from the
Byzantines. It ended in 711, when the Muslim Arabs invaded from North
Africa.
The Visigothic coinage was fairly extensive. About 20 kings
struck at more than 30 Iberian mints, including several in what is now
Portugal. All, more or less, of the coinage is gold as far as can
be determined, and of a single denomination, the tremissis, or third of
a solidus. The coins are about 15mm in diameter, half dime size,
and weigh a bit more than a gram. Generically Visigoth coins are
"common," with some thousands of specimens known. As I write this
there are six or so showing up for sale on Google, most on various national
Ebays, prices in the $600-1000 range.
In my opinion the Visigothic coins are remarkable for their artwork.
Evidently I'm not alone. Plenty of comments out there about the things,
references to Picasso. Maybe so, and I mentioned Picasso in relation
to ancient Iberian coins last month. Hard to believe the relationship
is nationalistically genetic, much simpler to assume that Picasso had actually
seen these coins at some early point in his life. For the Visigoths
I am perhaps reminded more of Miro than Mr. P. For the "genetic artistry"
aspect one would strain to produce Velasquez from the Visigothic ancestor,
inclining perhaps in the cultural realm towards divine creationism.
Where was I? Ah, yes, the early Visigothic gold tremisses
had a profile bust like most imperial tremisses. Later on they went
to facing busts on both sides. Whose face is on the "other" side
is debatable. All of the devices are simple sketches using dots and
lines. There is no modelling at all. The style is of astonishing
"crudity," but the workmanship is astonishingly excellent. The dies
are deeply cut, legends are readable, planchets are round and even, coins
are well. They so striking that, when pictured, they are almost always
enlarged, so that one supposes that one is looking at a nickel sized solidus
that one can easily hold in one's hand rather than a skimpy tremissis,
easily bent, easily dropped and lost in the shag rug that your wife has
been wanting to get rid of for the last twenty years.
Though the Visigoths coined at many mints, most of the available
coins are from their capitals: Barcelona for the early kings, Toledo for
the later ones. I've seen pictures of a coin from Braga in Portugal.
Well, I wonder, is there anyone out there trying to assemble a Visigoth
king set? Would look nice in a custom Capital holder, yes?
I wonder, if one started now, could such a set be completed, oh, ever?
But if one wanted to put together a set of all the mints...
Forget about it, I think.
The story of the Muslim invasion begins with an invitation.
The Visigoth kings had started out as Arians, Christians who had a different
take on the Trinity, the exact manner of birth of Jesus, and several other
aspects of doctrine that people were killing each other about back then.
About halfway through the history of Visigothic Iberia the Catholics got
the upper hand, and, as was the Catholic habit at the time, they persecuted
and banished those who were not them. Die hard Arians, some of them
nobles with armies, and their allies the Jews, fled south. Seeking
aid for a planned insurgency, they looked to Africa, which had just been
conquered from the Byzantines by those rude and crude newcomers, the Muslim
Arabs. Perhaps those new guys would lend a hand?
Well, yes, they would. The Muslims landed a fleet in 711.
In seven years they conquered nearly all of Iberia. I'll discuss
them next time.
I think it does not hurt, in this day and age, under these circumstances,
to rehearse over and over again the origins and early history of Islam.
Don't you?
This is to be an article about the coins of Portugal, and in
sequence we are now at the period of Islam in Iberia, a total of 800 years
from the first landing of the Muslim soldiers, invited in at the behest
of a Visigothic faction, to the expulsion of the last of them in the momentous
year 1492. In far flung Portugal the Muslim interlude was somewhat
shorter, about 500 years. Blink of the eye in geological terms, a
mere fifteen generations, as generations went back then, maybe twenty.
As most of us moderns are aware, with our paltry 5 or 6 or 7 generations
of family history, 15 generations is more or less forever, in terms of
life experience. Dim mists of antiquity. But, I hasten to remind,
through all those centuries of Iberian Islam the Christians did not forget
that Iberia had once been theirs. And today there are Muslims who
remember, as clearly as it were yesterday, that it had once been theirs.
So, in the 7th century CE, way over in Arabia, there was the
spice trade, and the metals trade, and the cloth trade, and the slave trade.
Politically it was tribal, what we see today in the region: top families,
middles, lows. Come to think of it, that's kind of how it is everywhere,
isn't it? Sort of. Anyway, it was a religious free-for-all
in the old pagan manner. I have my god, you have yours, who cares?
In Mecca there was a central shrine with a whole bunch of statues (idols)
of different gods and goddesses. Its still there, called the Ka'aba,
but all the statues are gone. There were also Jews and Christians
and Zoroastrians, locals who had lived in Arabia for generations, whole
tribes of them. Hindus and Buddhists passed through.
Muhammad was a mid-level businessman, member of a mid-level tribe.
He was the kind of guy who came to spend most of his time wondering what
it was all about, and when he was middle aged he started spending many
of his nights alone in a cave. One assumes, given that it was the
7th century, that he was sitting there in the dark, and if there was a
light it was a little oil lamp.
So one night there he was in the cave and he had an overwhelming
experience in which an immense voice engulfed him and recited poetry.
He went home all shook up, went back again, it happened again, kept happening.
He changed, the message of the voice changed, started telling him to do
things, mostly involving preaching and religious observance. After
a while he figured out that he was supposed to start a religion.
First he thought he was supposed to be some kind of Jew, but no, he was
informed, this is new, it is the real thing, I told them before but they
got it wrong, so I'm going to tell the world one more time. You're
the guy, said the voice, go tell them.
So he did. And people listened. More and more over
years and years. His preaching, the public worship and communitarianism
of his followers caused a ruckus in the culture and politics of Arabia,
opposition from the powers that were, then hostility, then violence.
He had to leave Mecca, ran away to Medina, which became his city.
He and his people responded to the violence of the Meccans with violence
of their own. They were good at it. They won. Muhammad
came back to Mecca as a negotiated conqueror. He cleaned the idols
out of the Ka'aba, Islam became the thing to be. If you wanted to
live in Mecca you were going to be a Muslim.
Muhammad's religion evolved during his life, he died without
an heir, or any sons for that matter, and without leaving any instructions
to his followers about what to do. The interested parties discussed
the next step, did not agree, came to blows, the community of Muslims started
to break up. Some of those who had been close to Muhammad decided
that the community should be held together by force. Others didn't,
but when someone won't fight and someone else will there's going to be
a fight. There was.
The errant Muslims were rounded up and given a set of principles
and practices to adhere to, on pain of death no less. The ones who
refused did not survive. The Muslims having been united, non-Muslims
were expelled from Arabia. The leaders of the movement thought "Why
stop here?"
They didn't. Muslim armies moved out into the surrounding
regions. Not all of them, just the interesting ones, the ones with
the major commerce. They did not, for example, go south and west
into Somalia. They went north and east into Palestine and Syria and
Iraq, and then on into Iran, and then Afghanistan. And they went
north and west into Egypt, then Libya, then Tunis (Carthage), then Morocco,
2500 miles away. They tried Anatolia, but that was too difficult.
These Muslim armies were very small organizations and those strings
of victories were seen for what they were, which was miracles. What's
wrong with us, asked the Byzantines, that those ragtag barbarians keep
beating us? They couldn't figure it out. No one ever has.
Miracle.
Actually, the process of conquest from outside was described
perfectly by a 14th century Arab scholar. I'll come back to him in
a bit.
The Muslim "tide" reached the Atlantic ocean about eight decades
after Muhammad fled to Medina from Mecca in 622 CE. A thin band of
Islam all along the southern Mediterranean. Broken Byzantine bureaucracies,
Christians all over the place. Back of beyond, in the hinterland
deserts and mountains were Berbers who had been there "forever."
And then there was Iberia. The Arabs were sitting there
in Morocco, feeling their oats, when they encountered a group of refugees
from Andalus, as they called Iberia. These refugees were a group
of Visigothic nobles and their hangers-on. They were fleeing religious
persecution and they wanted their stuff back. The Arabs took them
in, listened to their story, decided to help. It was something to
do, looked more interesting than messing around with the Berbers to the
south, who were always running away into the desert.
In 711 CE the first Arab soldiers got off their boats on Andalusian
soil. They had all success and no failures. The Visigoths just
couldn't get it together. The Arabs took almost all of Iberia in
seven years. The Christians held on only in Galicia in the far northwest.
The rest of it became part of the 'Alam al-Islam, the world of the Muslims.
You might be wondering, this being a coin newspaper, when we're
going to get to the coins. Soon. And what this all has to do
with Portuguese coins. The Arabs actually did make a few coins in
Portugal. Just a few. Right at the end of their run.
Bear with me please.
At the time of the Muslim conquest of Iberia all of Islam was
united under the rule of the caliph in Damascus. The first caliph
had been chosen by the associates of Muhammad after his death, and the
second as well, who was assassinated. By the third politics had entered
the picture in a serious way, he too was assassinated. The fourth
was Ali, revered by the Shiites, also murdered and then the caliphate was
taken by a general, never mind his personal name, but his family was the
Umayya. He founded a dynasty known as the Umayyads, handing the caliphate
to his descendents for a century. The conquest of Iberia took place
under the Umayyads. You need to know this.
I will now digress and bring up that 14th century Arab scholar.
He is known to posterity as Ibn Khaldun, and is reckoned as the first sociologist.
He developed, from a study of the past, a set of processes he called something
like "the law of history." It goes like this:
People somewhere build up a culture with creature comforts.
When the comfort level reaches a certain point they get soft and pleasure
loving. Outside the gates the warlike barbarians roam, sharpening
their warlike skills, disdaining comfort and pleasure. At some point
a charismatic leader develops out there in the wilderness and unites the
barbarians, who rampage into the culture zone and overwhelm it. The
barbarian leader becomes king of the city, hands it on to his son, who
is also hard and mean, having been raised on the outside, but maybe not
quite as much as the old man. The son lacks some of the charisma
of the father, because all the old generals knew him when he was still
in diapers. The generals support him out of loyalty to the old man,
but the son and his buddies have to prove themselves so they change the
winning formula, sometimes for reasons perhaps callow. The footsoldiers
don't know much about the son and vice versa.
The grandson, however, has been raised in the palace. He
may be mean, but he's soft, and he does not know the people much, nor they
him. He spends his time dealing with bureaucrats and court intrigue,
and does not have that fire in the belly caused by hunger and desire.
All his desires are sated at the moment of their formation.
The dynasty rots. Bureaucrats become dynasts. Provinces
break away. Out there in the desert the barbarians await their next
charismatic leader.
Sound familiar? Back then these processes took generations
to play out. Nowadays, with faster communication, "dynasties" rise
and fall in a few decades, maybe less.
So, by 718 the Arab conquest of Iberia was complete. In
733 a revolt against the Umayyads began in Iraq. The Umayyad family
had obeyed the law of history, the last few caliphs being mean and incompetent.
The rebels won out and inaugurated the Abbasid dynasty. Some of the
Umayyads escaped. They went to Iberia, where they set up shop.
The world of Islam was divided in two, the caliphate, moved from Damascus
to Baghdad, and an independent emirate in Spain. The emirate consolidated
and stabilized. After 150 years the emir adopted the title of caliph,
so then there were two of them.
Pre-Islamic Arabia had very little in the way of coinage, but
the conquered territories had been using them for at least a millennia,
and the Arabs immediately took to them for reasons both economic and political.
Coins were, until the late 19th century, the preeminent vehicle of propaganda.
For the Muslims they were a great vehicle for spreading their ideas77.
Christian coins had crosses, Muslim coins had the profession of faith.
They are great for historians too; most of them having both date and mint
written right there on the coins.
The Umayyads had standardized their gold and silver coinage about
a decade before the conquest of Iberia, and when they fled to Spain they
took their coinage operation with them. They struck silver dirhams,
wider than a quarter but thinner, and a few gold dinars, the word adapted
from the old Roman silver denarius, the equivalent of the contemporary
Byzantine solidus. Mint name was "Andalus," which meant all of Iberia.
The actual mint was in the city of Cordoba, with some coins struck at a
branch mint at the nearby palace of Zahra.
Early in the 11th century the dynasty of the Spanish Umayyads
lost its oomph and Muslim Iberia fell apart into local governments.
Collectively these kinglets are described in Arabic as Muluk al-Tawaif,
in Spanish as Reyes Taifas, both terms translating as "party" or "faction"
kings. In today's terminology we would call them local warlords.
A bunch of them issued coins. Some of the coins, as you might expect,
are excessively rare. Guy is in charge of a couple of hundred soldiers,
takes over a town of mud huts, calls himself a king, issues a couple hundred
coins for bragging purposes. Few years later he's gone.
Every now and then a coin turns up of a previously unknown party
king. So far, I think, none of the post-Umayyad party kings were
in Portugal in particular.
During the Umayyad centuries North Africa was an active player
in the regional game. Local emirs had broken with the Abassids shortly
after the Umayyads set up in Iberia. Egypt broke away with the founding
of the Shiite Fatimid caliphate early in the 10th century CE and that was
basically all of Islamic Africa.
In the mid-11th century a religious reform movement arose amongst
the Berbers of southern Morocco. It became political and military
and quickly took over Morocco. We call them the Almoravids.
In a reprise of the 8th century, they were invited to intervene in the
squabbles of the party kings, entered Iberia in 1086, conquered and extinguished
most of the warlords within a decade. They struck a few coins in
Iberia and deteriorated according to Ibn Khaldun's law of history in about
60 years. The primary pressure for them was yet another religious
movement, that of the Almohades. In the wake of Almoravid dissolution
another group of party kings came briefly into being, with a few coins,
mostly rare testifying to their brief moment in the Iberian sun.
One line of them coined some extremely rare pieces in the Portuguese town
of Silves between 1145-57.
The Almoravids had a reputation as somewhat live-and-let-live.
The Almohades were the opposite. Puritans, intolerant. They
took Morocco and most of Iberia in the mid-12th century. They lasted
about a century there, then were pushed out by resurgent Christians.
If you want to collect Almohad coins you can do it. There
are generically common square silver dirhams, the Moroccan versions fairly
cheap, and very nice looking gold coins, not uncommon, but not so cheap.
Issues from Spanish mints are scarcer and more expensive. Silver
and gold imitations by Christian neighboring enemies are available.
The imitations without crosses have a similar availability and price profile
to the originals. A few, with crosses, cost arms and legs (so to
speak).
In the wake of the departure of the Almohades yet another group
of party kings emerged briefly, most to be extinguished in short order
by the advancing Christian reconquista. In this group of warlords
was one who has provided the only collectable coin of Muslim Portugal.
The guy's name was Musa bin Muhammad, dates were 1234-62. He issued
a square dirham styling himself "Amir al-Gharb." Al-Gharb means "the
west," in Portuguese it is Algarve, the southernmost region of modern Portugal.
The mint was probably in Silves. Steve Album told me that the current
price is in the $200.00 range.
At the time this coin was issued northern Portugal had been reconquered
by Christians for a bit more than a century. Shortly after its issue
the southern zone was conquered as well. That process, and the coins
thereof, will be the subject of the next instalment.
I spent parts of several days last month looking on the web for
coins of 12th and 13th century Christian Portugal to buy. I didn't
find any. I didn't even find any pictures. Finally, this morning
(12/27/06), I found a coin in my time frame on Ebay, I will bid on it,
the auction will end after the deadline for this article. It is a
crummy little billon coin, thin, crude. I pondered that absence.
The conclusion I came to was that early Christian Portugal was dirt poor
and they didn't make many coins. We all knew that, didn't we?
Just figures.
The history of the Iberian reconquista is mostly about scrubby
bands of soldiers led by grubby warlords fighting over mud huts and scrawny
flocks of animals. There was a distinct lack of commerce in the interior
of the peninsula in those centuries. The business was along the coasts,
trading out raw materials, bringing back technology and luxuries to the
merchant and ruling classes who were doing the business in the first place.
Quite a high degree of development occurred in the power centers of the
Muslim zone. Cordoba, the seat of the Umayyad amirs (later caliphs)
had amenities like street lights, municipal baths, trash collection, a
university, a manuscript production industry.
The early Muslims were into urban planning. Their capital
cities were the most comfortable places in the world at the time.
The European high society types were living in comparative hovels.
Muslim planning did not extend outside the city walls, however, and the
peasants of Islam slept very close to the earth, just like all the other
peasants of the world.
The Muslim conquest of the 8th century got all the way into southern
France. They were kicked out after a few decades. The Christians
of Iberia were not pushed out entirely. They held on in the far northwest.
The situation was dicey for a number of decades and then what was left
of Christian Iberia settled down for a few centuries of squalid poverty.
The Muslim zone deteriorated due to the normal inherent problems
of dynastic government: unfortunate successions and court corruption.
It was conquered from Morocco by two successive Muslim religious movements,
each of which also deteriorated for the same reasons. Each time the
Muslim governments dissolved the Christians cleverly took advantage of
the situation and siezed some territory, until by the 12th century or so
they had about half of the Iberian peninsula. During the last disintegration
in the 13th century there was no new group of religious fanatics come storming
out of Africa to save them, and the Christians got all but a few nubs of
southernmost coastal Spain, the last of them finally extinguished in 1492.
As the Christians acquired actual Iberian cities like Barcelona
and Toledo they started acquiring already existing economic activity, including
trade, which they really didn't do much of in the so-called "dark ages,"
during which all of the "real" business was done in the World of Islam
The Christians "quickly" got pretty good at it.
Business back then was mostly done in cash, if not in barter,
with a bit of very private banking. Cash was gold, silver, or copper,
each metal doing the work of a particular economic level. Copper
was what you bought your eggs with. Silver was to pay your skilled
labor with. Gold was for buying slaves, fighting wars, doing major
wholesale.
It is possible to play various games with specie currency if
you want to, have to, or can. The major game categories are setting
exchange rates and debasement. The goal of the games is usually to
disadvantage someone and advantage someone else. Not infrequently
the issuing authority finds itself forced to play a game by dint of outside
pressure or sheer poverty.
Usually the games are structured so that the chumps are either
bottom end copper people or lower middle class silver people. The
gold people usually have loud enough voices to keep their swag from getting
touched. In the World of Islam, and in the Ancient World, for example,
there were plenty of examples of debased or shrunken silver coins, but
the gold was almost always pure as could be.
Not necessarily so in the reconquered Christian zones of Iberia.
The Muslim money was consistently better than the Christian stuff, especially
the gold, and it circulated freely in the Christian towns. When,
in the course of the reconquista, and occasionally in response to pressure
from the church, the supply of Muslim gold got tight, local imitations
were produced. The imitations ranged from "can't tell the difference"
through mere misspellings to changed Arabic legends, to things with Latin
letters, legends, crosses. And, usually, the Christian versions of
the Arab coins were a trifle light or a trifle base, or both. Even
the gold. Poverty at work there. Not as much to work with.
The Christians called their imitation Muslim gold coins "morabitini,"
singular morabitino, from the Almoravids, whose originals they were copying.
In the course of time the name morphed into "maravedi," which became a
standard Spanish denomination and was debased over several centuries until
it ended up as a copper coin. The most common of the morabitini are
very rare. They were made all over Christian Iberia. Portuguese
versions are extremely rare.
Well, let's look at Portugal from the Reconquista perspective.
The last of the Visigoths were holed up in Asturias, which is northwestern
Spain. In the late 8th century they pulled all the Christians they
could out of southern Galicia and northern Portugal, leaving the region
substantially depopulated. When the Arabs did not move in settlers
in any kind of quantity the Christians gradually moved back. In due
course soldiers came in to protect (or "protect") them, and then bureaucrats
to govern them.
The top level of control back then was the warlord network we
call the feudal system. They did protection for the "common" people
and the merchants and in return they got cuts of the action. There
was a chain of responsibility from the count of the county to the emperor
of the empire.
In the 9th century there was a king of Asturias and a count of
"Portucale" vassal to Asturias. In the 10th century Asturias expanded
east and south and became Leon. Further expansion resulted in a breakaway
of border areas, the east becoming Castile and the south Galicia.
Castile was into reconquest and campaigned in northern and central Portugal,
taking the city of Coimbra in 1064 and creating a county. Lisbon
was briefly overcome but was relieved by the Almoravids. Castile
came back with an army of French crusaders, and the top half of Portugal
(but not Lisbon) was definitively taken by the Christians. A French
knight, Henry of Burgundy, married Teresa, daughter of the king of Castile,
who gave them the county of "Portugal," which they ruled autonomously.
Henry died in 1112. The king of Castile, Alfonso II, had
died 3 years before. Both Portugal and Castile were then ruled by
the widowed wives. The women did not get along and fought over territory
among other things. Nobles on both sides grumbled for reasons both
sexist and practical, both queens being somewhat headstrong and incompetent.
The Castilian died in 1126, Portuguese Teresa was pushed aside in favor
of her son, Afonso Henriques. Mother and son fought a short war.
Son won.
Afonso set up an administration in Coimbra and proceeded to campaign
southward against the "Moors." He won a major battle at Ourique,
in southern Portugal, in 1139. His forces were heavily outnumbered,
but the Muslims were a weak force cobbled together from a bunch of "party
kings" (warlords). According to the propaganda of the victor, five
of those petty kings were slain during the fighting. The image of
their shields, arranged as a cross, was adopted by Afonso as his heraldry,
and this emblem has become the Portuguese national arms.
Immediately after the battle he arranged to have himself declared
king of Portugal. A few decades of mopping up followed during which
Lisbon, among other cities, was taken. In 1179, with all but the
southernmost region in his hands, Afonso was recognized as king of Portugal
by the pope.
Coins. I think I would not go so far as to claim that there
were no coins issued in northern Portugal before the crowning of Afonso
I, but I have not seen them. The tradtional "first coins of Portugal"
are the aforementioned crummy billon dinheiros of the first king, Afonso.
There are several different types, all describing him as king, also half-sized
mealhas. They are rare, generally not to be found, four figures or
more if they were to be.
From this point things get "normal" from a numismatic point of
view. Afonso I was succeeded by his son, Sancho I, ruled 1185-1211.
Sancho fought the Muslims in the south, winning some then losing when the
Almohades came on the scene. Then he got involved in an eight year
war with the kingdom of Castile & Leon. His last decade was peaceful
and prosperous, save for an argument with the papacy that ended with his
abdication.
Sancho's coinage continued the billon dinheiro and mealha denominations
of his father and added gold morabitini with the entirely European type
of a mounted knight. The 5-shields of Portugal appear for the first
time on his coins. The billons are rare at best. Availability
of the gold is close to nil. I don't think I've ever seen one.
Before his retirement to a monastery for the last year of his
life Sancho had granted enoromous estates to his various children, these
holdings to be retained tax exempt and free. This thought of taking
care of the kids at the expense of the country has been one of the flaws
of dynastic government since forever. He also had to make substantial
concessions to the church. Sancho's successor, Afonso II, 1211-23,
passed most of his reign fighting with his siblings to get their property
back into the national scheme. He was only partially successful,
and had to endure intervention from Leon. He tussled with the church
too over property and revenue, and was excommunicated for his temerity.
When the king is under a ban his country is too, an unpleasant situation
for the faithful who died in that time. The ban was only lifted after
his death.
The coinage of Afonso II continued the general scheme of his
father and grandfather. There were gold morabitini and billon dinheiros.
Both are a bit reduced in size. Mealhas were not produced.
I suppose there is a possibility of finding one of his dinheiros.
Good luck even finding a gold to look at, let alone buy.
The next king was 13 years old when crowned. Sancho II,
1223-48, was under the thumb of a church led regency committee that fired
the old anti-clerical ministers and arranged an unequal alliance with Castile.
Sancho attained majority in 1227 and immediately rehired the old guard.
He campaigned in the south, pushing the Muslims out of Alentejo and parts
of Algarve. Arguments with the church led to another interdiction.
Sancho submitted, but the Portuguese bishops had been permanently alienated
when he took back his father's ministers, and when Sancho married a Castilian
lady they used this "commerce with the enemy" to foment a rebellion with
a brother, Afonso, as figurehead. The papacy came in on the side
of the rebels, and after a year of war Sancho was driven out, retired to
a Spanish monaster. Two years later he was dead.
The coins, once again, were the extremely rare gold morabitino
and the rare billon dinheiro. There is an early type dinheiro with
a shield type obverse and a later series with four of the five Moorish
shields, the fifth reduced to a central dot, hanging loose in the field.
The coin I found on Ebay is one of his dinheiros. I'll let you know
what it went for next month.
There are many subvarieties of lettering and punctuation in the
coinage of Sancho II. Scholars argue about these varieties, do they
represent privy marks or something, or not? Probably they do.
Coinage is important to the people who make it. They tend not to
do things by accident. They tend to tell the hired diesinkers exactly
what to do.
There is one more ruler in the "early coinage of Portugal" series,
an interesting character with a boring name, Afonso III, 1248-79.
Coming to power as a result of that rebellion fomented by the Portuguese
bishops, he quickly showed himself to be an independent actor by kicking
the Muslims out of Algarve. This annoyed Castile, which thought it
had a claim there, and a brief war ensued. Afonso concluded this
unpleasantness by agreeing to wed an illegimate daughter of the Castilian
king, which I guess proved that Castile didn't care all that much about
Algave anyway, not actually having any presence there at all.
There was a wrinkle in that marriage scheme though. That
was that Afonso was, uh, still married to his, um, first wife, who was,
you know, sort of still alive. That was kind of a problem, in a)
that the celebration of the wedding was not sanctified by the church, which
in that time and place meant it didn't happen, b) therefore the king and
his strumpet were immediately and automatically excommunicated, c) and
therefore the entire nation of Portugal was too. This was 1254.
King and country hung tough though, and in 1262, to make a long
story short, the pope granted a divorce on the old marriage (no children)
and gave the nod on the new one. As a sort of belated wedding gift
Castile renounced Algarve and with that modern Portugal was complete.
For coins of Afonso III there are billon dinheiros and that's
all. No gold - money was tight. Again there are all these minor
varieties that are probably privy marks. During one of the national
assemblies representatives of the merchant guilds put through a resolution
denouncing billon and demanding silver, but nothing happened in the real
world. Money was tight. Where, asked the king, was the silver
supposed to come from.
The answer, as it happened, was, in the late 13th century, about
to be given, allowing larger silver coins to be made in Europe for essentially
the first time since ancient Greece. Good point to start with next
time.
First some old business. Recall from last month I told you
about a 13th century Portuguese coin I found on Ebay, the only one that
old available (anywhere?) on the web during the several weeks I was looking.
I bought that coin for $71.00 and considered it a bargain. I will
sell it for, well, more. It is much rarer than, say, contemporary
English pennies, nice examples of which go for about the same. Contemporary
Spanish coins go for less than half the price.
I think it would be useful at this point to rehearse the various
stages of numismatic development in Europe from the end of the Roman empire
to, well, why not take it up to today? It’s pertinent. Then
we can get back to the king list: their foibles and their coins.
In a given time frame a nation’s coinage will be influenced
by several factors: among which the needs of commerce both internal and
external, the ambitions and requirements of the rulers, the general availability
of portable value (money). In the last century of Rome and the pre-Islamic
centuries of Byzantium silver-using middle class commerce was allowed to
wither, copper using peasants enserfed legally or circumstantially, sometimes
bound so tightly as to not need money at all, the ruling classes conducting
their business in gold as usual. The coinage reflects this: no silver.
The silver zone was over east in those days, in Sasanian Iran, an entrepreneurial
society that coined almost exclusively in silver. East of Iran gold
and copper began again, continuing to China, where they were doing something
rather different. The Arabs took over Iran late in the 7th century
and adopted that entrepreneurial posture and extended it throughout the
zone of their conquests, which extended from Spain to India, leaving Europe
as a more or less non-monetary barbarian zone, more or less on a level
with sub-Saharan Africa.
Contact between the Europeans and the Arabs created jealousy
on the part of the Europeans for the obviously higher standard of living
in the Muslim zone, at least in the Muslim cities. In due course
the Europeans started to create a merchant class and the tools of that
trade to go with it. That tool was silver coinage, an evolved version
of the Roman denarius, “denaro” in the Romance language zone, “penny”
in the Germanic zone, and of course today that coin is our “dime.”
The full fineness silver penny went a bit more than 2 to the
“standard” Islamic dirham, but supply problems in various places and
times caused shrinkage, debasement, or both. Rich countries like
England could put of high quality money, scrubby countries like Portugal
had to work with lightweight billon.
I don’t want to get into the various factors that led to the
development of the Crusades, but the economic result was a forced increase
of activity in Europe. The growth required more coinage, and in due
course a larger silver coin was produced, first in Italy, then everywhere.
The coin was equivalent to 4 fine pennies or 12 base denari, called “grosso,”
“groschen,”groat,” depending on where it was used. This groschen
period started in the 13th century.
The early 14th century experienced the black death, which acted
kind of like a war but without the property damage. There was a hit,
then the economy got up, dusted itself off, and got back to work, harder
than ever. The resurgent middle economy required a yet larger silver
coin, and “shillings” came into use.
Continued middle class development developed a need for the silver
dollar by the 15th century. They actually were able to make some
of them in the late 1400s as a result of the discovery of some minable
deposits in eastern central Europe. Then in the 16th century they
found all of that silver in the western hemisphere and they went hog-wild
with silver dollars for about 400 years. They had so much silver
they didn’t know what to do with it. “I know”, said someone,
“let’s have some big wars.” So they did.
It was more complicated of course, but essentially that is what
happened.
All of that money poured into destruction created inflation.
The inflation was dealt with over and over by debasing the middle class
money. After the middle class was sufficiently ruined for a couple
of decades there was a “reform” that brought back better money for
a while.
The inflation and contraction of the silver money kept happening
until the 19th century, when, as a result of the California, Australian,
South African, and Alaskan gold rushes, there got to be “too much”
gold relative to silver. Silver went up so high that countries had
to stop making silver dollars. They perforce went on the “gold
standard,” making up grammatically correct explanations as to why that
was a good idea.
The gold standard “worked,” or seemed to, until World War
I. In the landscape of debt in its aftermath the whole world went
off the gold standard, using the metal for hoarding private and public.
Silver got pretty shaky too, though it didn’t hit the wall until after
World War II. By 1950 most of the world had sworn off precious metal
money, and by 1970 or so the entire world was using tokens and paper.
From tokens we have moved on to credit. Now when the powers
that be want to soak the middle class they do it with tax policy, which
is essentially credit management on the public side.
That’s the economic history of the west that has become the
history of the world for the past 1500 years.
My last article ended at the close of the 13th century in Portugal.
The money was a smattering of little billon denaros, pennies if you will,
and maybe a few gold coins, more for purposes of prestige than for any
kind of commerce. They just were not doing a lot of business in Portugal
at that time. Hardscrabble agriculture, trade with the Muslim enemies
in Iberia and perhaps in Africa, some squabbly business mixed with internecine
warfare against the Spanish neighbors, and a bit of that ancient maritime
trade with England.
The previously discussed sometime bigamist king, Afonso III,
was succeeded in 1279 by Dinis I. His 46 years of mostly peaceful
rule were mostly progressive and consolidative and he left the country
better than he found it. The border was fixed in 1297 by a treaty
with Castile-Leon and has remained where it was to this day. His
coinage continued the dineros of his predecessors and they are the same
little billon things, ugly and hard to get. He struck no gold coins
that we know of, but he did make the first large silver coin of Portugal,
called “tornes” after the contemporary French gros tournois, whose
reverse it emulated. The coin seems to be rare to the point of unavailability.
Denis conducted diplomacy-by-marriage with neighboring Castile-Leon.
His ancestors had done the same, his successors would as well, this would
cause problems in the 16th century. He produced offspring with people
other than his wife, in particular a boy named Afonso Sanches, who became
known as his favorite. When Denis died in 1325 his successor, the
legitimate son known as Afonso IV, banished Afonso Sanches to Castile,
where he plotted and schemed. Two unsuccessful attempts at invasion
came to naught, and a peace treaty was arranged. Afonso IV married
a royal Castilian according to the tradition, a daughter was produced,
she was married to the king of Castile when she came of age. The
king turned out to be a jerk who publicly abused his wife. Afonso
became irritated enough to go to war against Castile. It took 4 years
to calm things down. The story goes that the Portuguese wife played
a key role in the peace by saying things like “It wasn’t that bad,”
he’s changed,” “he’s really nice otherwise,” and so forth.
Anyway, the war ended.
The spouse abuser king of Castile was succeeded by Pedro the
Cruel, who was worse. Civil war developed in Castile, with wealthy
refugees setting up in Portugal, where they began hanging around at court,
conducting intrigue and bribery. Things got touchy when the daughter
of one of them became the lover of the Portuguese heir, Pedro, having several
children by him. The kids were healthy and strapping, while the legitimate
heir, Fernando, was weak and unhealthy. When Pedro’s wife died
he announced his intention to marry the Spanish mistress.
King Afonso tried to resolve the situation by having the Castilian
lover murdered. Bad decision, it turned out. Such decisions
usually are. Pedro gathered an army and went on a rampage for a couple
of years. Then things settled down. Then Afonso died in 1357.
Noteworthy developments during his reign were government support for a
commercial fleet and a navy to protect it, and the first voyages of discovery.
Afonso’s coinage consisted of a no-nonsense return to billon
dinheiros only, no fancy silver coins and there had been no gold for a
century. Availability of those dinheiros is no better than for his
predecessors. Hard to find.
Pedro I ruled for 10 years, continued the centralizing policy
of his father, and worked to limit the scope of independent activity of
the church. He apparently expended much energy on the punishment
of the murderers of his mistress and the veneration of her memory.
His coinage consists of dinheiros, even rarer than those of the other kings
of this period, and a couple of impossible to obtain gold doblas.
The doblas were made in emulation of the rare Spanish versions, themselves
struck in me-too fashion in response to the excellent and moderately common
double dinars of the Almohades.
Pedro was followed by that unhealthy legitimate son, Fernando
I, in 1367. Two years in he put forth a claim to the newly vacant
throne of Castile. There were other claimants as well, including
the English John of Gaunt. Much palaver and a bit of inconclusive
warfare over several years produced, oh, pretty much nothing. In
one of the early “settlements” Fernando was supposed to marry a Castilian
royal, but, following the family tradition, fell in love and married someone
else. Later on the daughter of that union, Beatriz, was pledged to
a son of the Castilian king, and this was to unite the two countries.
She did indeed marry him, but the Portuguese refused to honor the union
clause.
During the reign of Fernando an economic revolution took place
in the general European coinage. That revolution consisted essentially
of the implementation of a range of denominations on a trimetallic scheme
consisting of fine gold, fine silver, and billon. The relations of
the metals to each other were a rather floaty, meaning that a given coin
would be issued in a decreed relationship to existing coins, but on the
ground market forces prevailed where armed enforcers were not present.
The denominations could get interesting too, with odd fractions like 5.3
(someplace in France, I forget where). Suddenly, all over Europe,
a coinage of 1 or 2 or 3 denominations was replaced by a system with 11.
The Portuguese plethora issued by Fernando I consisted of two
gold denominations, the dobra and its half, issued in two successive types,
both imitating French coins. In fine silver, the first ever in Christian
Portugal, there were reales and halves, made to compete with the contemporary
Spanish versions. In billon there was the debased tornes and its
half in a couple of successive designs, “barbudas” and halves of slightly
altered weight, smaller coins called “graves” and “pilartes,” and
dinheiros. The succession of billon indicates an ongoing attempt
to squeeze revenue out of the lower middle class. During this reign
a secondary mint operated at times in Porto, supplementing the output of
Lisbon.
I have read that Fernando’s gold and silver are not impossible
to find, but I have not encountered them. Something should be available
in billon if you’re patient.
Fernando died in 1383 without a male heir. The throne was
claimed by the married Beatriz and also by two illegitimate brothers of
Fernando, both named Joao. Two years of anarchy ensued, in which
Castile, France, and England got involved. As the dust settled one
of the Joaos came out on top. An extremely rare silver real is known
for Beatriz.
Joao ruled for 48 mostly peaceful years. His only military
venture of note was the capture of Ceuta in Morocco in 1415, which can
be seen as the first venture in colonialism by a European state.
Joao’s coinage was simpler than that of Fernando, but was still
complex, illustrating a series of debasements and reforms. There
was no gold. Silver reales and halves were replaced by billon with
quarters added, several different series, from three mints: Lisbon, Porto,
and Evora. Later in the reign copper coins were introduced, same
types as the billon, except for a rare coin from Ceuta which had a “pseudo-Arabic”
legend on one side. The silver is rare as usual for the period.
Billon coins can be obtained. Look! I found one!
Isn't it kind of interesting that scruffy little Portugal should
have become for a moment in time a preeminent world power? It was,
relatively speaking, nothing, always having to be looking over its shoulder
at that bully Castile-Leon. Then all of a sudden, so to speak, there
it is on the other side of the world, doing business, overthrowing governments,
enslaving Indians.
What made them go out and do that stuff in the 15-16th centuries?
Oh, lots of reasons. Major events of the 14th century had been the
Black Plagues, which created opportunities for the survivors. For
Portugal, by 1400, the major indecisions regarding Spain and Mediterranean
possibilities had been resolved; no joy there. Spain was not going
to facilitate Portuguese access to the Mediterranean in a fraternal matter.
Instead it was going to grind and cheat and permanently take advantage
of the situation. If Portugal wanted in on the Orient trade it was
going to have to figure out something else. And if it wanted to do
business in Europe it had to transship through England or Germany.
Europe was all about kicking them when they were down back then.
They (the Portuguese) were doing a lot of business with their
enemies the Muslims. It was kind of late in the game for the Muslim
"empire" at that point, but they were still doing business from Morocco
to China and Indonesia, they had the silk and the spices, their gold was
pure.
In the habit of the time the two "worlds" would occasionally
have a crusade/jihad against each other. Then they would get back
to trading.
The Muslims had nop notch engineering and mathematics in the
14th century. The Chinese were, in historical terms, the normal global
center of culture, but they were having their Mongol interlude and were
taking a break from intellectual pursuits.
The big technical problems then mostly had to do with water:
transit and usage. In the 14th century they figured out how to use
astronomy to go beyond coastal navigation and they learned how to build
boats that could run against the wind. The Arabs started the process
and the Portuguese took it through to completion. By the start of
the 15th century they had the tools and the systems needed to sail all
over the world. They could, there were good reasons to, they did.
The Madeira islands were "found" in 1420, the Azores in 1427.
Successive expeditions sailed ever farther south along the African coast
until by the 1440s the Portuguese found themselves under the shoulder of
West Africa and therefore outflanking the Arab caravan routes. Down
there in what is now Nigeria and Guinea they found what they were really
after: yellow gold and black slaves.
I guess its interesting to note that from the very first slave
taken the cover story was that it was a charity venture meant to spread
Christianity to the heathen. The first big time European slaver,
known to history as Henry the Navigator, hero of Portuguese history, put
forth this canard and it remained in use for 400 years. "It's for
their own good," they would say.
My survey of Henry the Navigator references revealed two schools
of thought. One has him as a scholar and visionary who established
a school or salon of scientific research. The other describes him
as a greedy slaver who cared about innovation only as a means to ignoble
ends. These days for every story there is a counter-story.
Is this how myths get made?
Anyway, suddenly there was money in Portugal, gold no less, enough
to make gold coins for circulation, to do some building, and to set up
colonies in these new enterprise zones.
That general tendency outlined, let us continue with the king
list, that most convenient tool for organizing coins.
Joao I died in 1433 of the plague and was succeeded by Duarte
I, which name is anglicized as Edward. Joao had gone and siezed Ceuta
in Morocco in 1415, thinking that he would be able to control the caravan
trade of which that city was a terminus. That turned out to be a
crackpot idea. The Arab caravaneers declined to deal with the smelly
infidel ruffians and stayed with their own people in the nearby town of
Tangier. The Portuguese ruminated on this turn of events and then
decided on a plan. Duarte's brothers Fernando and Henry (the Navigator)
would capture Tangier as well. Duarte's government would pay for
the job. Something doesn't work, try it again, maybe it'll work this
time.
The Tangier expedition of 1437 was successful in capturing the
city, but the cost was seriously high, and brother Fernando was captured.
The terms of his release was the surrender of Ceuta. This was not
done, and Fernando died in captivity later.
Duarte died in 1438 of plague, just like his father.
Coins. Duarte I struck a gold escudo for prestige purposes
rather than for use. Groat-sized silver leals had limited circulation.
There was one billon, the real branco, which name broadcasts the normal
European joke of the middle ages and later of calling black billon coins
"white." Copper was extensively coined for the first time.
The main copper coin was the "ceitil," the half was the real preto.
So Duarte made the first ceitil, which became THE common Portuguese coin
of the period. Coins were struck at Lisbon and Porto. Porto
is much the scarcer mint.
Duarte's coins are not particularly common. He was the
last of the pre-imperial Portuguese kings, the last before all that foreign
booty started coming in. If you find one of his coins it will probably
be a ceitil, but if you find a ceitil, and you will if you look, it will
probably not be of Duarte.
The next guy on the Portuguese throne was Afonso V, who was 6
years old at the time of his accession. A child king has to have
a regent, and there is always intrigue and backroom dealing when there
is a regent. In the case of Afonso there were two in succession.
The first was his mother, who was widely despised as a female foreigner.
After a year she was pushed aside by the nobles in favor of Afonso's uncle,
the duke of Coimbra, who spent a decade trying to restrain the avarice
of said nobles.
On attainment of his majority in 1448 Afonso immediately fired
Coimbra and brought in an ally of his mother as part of his government.
This was the duke of Braganza, another Afonso, who had been scheming against
Coimbra for years. Braganza fomented a little war against Coimbra,
who was killed, and Braganza became the power behind the throne.
It turned out that Afonso V was fond of marauding. He messed
around in North Africa througout his reign, and pushed forward the exploration
and colonization of West Africa. He also tried to make a move on
Spain when the king of Castile-Leon died without a male heir. Several
people tried to jump on that throne, but Isabel, of whom we are all aware,
turned out to be the toughest cookie in Iberia. Afonso, unreasonably
out of joint about this failure, went whining to the king of France, who
said nice things but did nothing. Afonso became depressed, abdicated,
retired to a monastery, died. It is written (in Wikipedia) that mourning
was universal in Portugal. The people loved him for his proud accomplisments
and the money he brought in. The nobles feared, with good reason,
his successor.
Coinage of Afonso V, 1438-81, was in gold, silver, billon, and
copper. The gold was the ceremonial escudo and its occasional half
and the smaller cruzado, the first gold coin of Portugal made for use from
that booty they were getting down in Africa. I can't really say that
I've seen one of those, but they are theoretically collectible, as opposed
to earlier gold coins which never show up in the market.
Silver denominations were the leal, real grosso, half real, and
chinfrao (quarter). None of these are likely to turn up as you scour
the back shelves of aged European dealers.
Gold and silver struck later in the reign have the arms of Castile-Leon
on one side to advertise the claim to that throne.
Billon coins include the normal real branco, the slightly smaller
"espadim," named for the hand holding a dagger that was its type, its half,
and the still smaller "cotrim." These billon reductions were essentially
hidden taxes on the middle class, what they called "merchants" back then.
All of Afonso's billons are scarce.
The common Afonso coins are the copper ceitils, which will turn
up not infrequently in medieval batches. When you see plentiful copper
you are seeing some governmental support of the peasantry. Evidently
it was OK to be an ordinary person in mid and late 15th century Portugal.
The smaller copper, the real preto, is rather scarce.
The usual mints were active: Lisbon (common), Porto (scarce),
and Ceuta (rare).
The son of Afonso, Joao II, became king in 1481 at the age of
25. He was viewed with suspicion by the nobles because he would not
play the normal games of intrigue. Immediately on his succession
he began to promulgate decrees to restrict the freedom of action of the
peers, who fretted and conspired. The biggest noble, the duke of
Braganza, foolishly wrote a letter to queen Isabel in Castile in which
he complained and requested aid. The treasonous letter was intercepted
and Joao outlawed the family, confiscated its assets, and executed the
duke.
Now the nobles really had a reason to worry. The following
year Joao invited another big noble to the castle for a chat and, so the
story goes, murdered him with the knife he held in his own hand.
A reign of terror ensued in which dozens of bigshots, including bishops,
were killed, exiled, or imprisoned.
After the state terror years Joao settled down to a few decades
of serious maritime exploration. We know of the high points, which
included the voyage of Diaz around the Cape of Good Hope, but quite a bit
of the activity was made a state secret, the records lost in a fire in
the 18th century. Recall that Columbus supposedly first went to Joao
to back his westward expedition. Some suppose that he was turned
down because the Portuguese had already figured out the size of the earth
and knew that eastward is shorter, and some hypothesize that they had already
visited the western hemisphere as early as the 1470s. There is also
some webspinning about Columbus being a Portuguese agent gone to Castile
to flimflam them into wasting their time in the western hemisphere while
the Portuguese mopped up the Indian Ocean, which they did. But the
New World turned out to be of not negligible value and the Spaniards got
the best bits, so if that was the plan it sort of backfired.
When Columbus actually found something in the west the Portuguese
realized they had to do something, so they hied themselves over to the
pope for some mediation. The result was the treaty of Tordesillas
which divided the world in half, everything on "that" side was Spanish,
everything on "this" side was Portuguese. Since most of the western
hemisphere is on "that" side all of Latin America except Brazil speaks
Spanish.
The end of Joao's reign was colorful and tragic. He had
one son, whom he married to a daughter of Fernando of Aragon, who was married
to Isabel of Castile. The heir of Castile was sickly and looked to
die before his parents. So the son of Joao, it seemed, was likely
to become king of Spain. Except that one day, out riding with his
Castilian valet, he was thrown from his horse and died. And the valet
disappeared. Colorful indeed, in a reddish kind of way. But
that was the end of Joao's designs on Castile, and 4 years later, in 1495,
he died without an heir. The nobles chose his successor, a cousin,
who became Manuel I.
Joao's coins mark a departure: no billon. The gold cruzados
were struck in some quantity, though you are not likely to run into them
today. There was also a minor gold series: a large coin showing the
enthroned king facing, called "justo" from the beginning of the obverse
legend, and its half with the "espadim" type mentioned above. The
silver marks the first appearance of the vintem or 20 reis, and therefore
the first reis coin. These vintems are not rare, there is one on
Ebay as I write this. There were also half vintems and cinquinhos
(5 reis), both much scarcer.
Copper ceitils, not uncommon, round out the coinage. The
mints were Lisbon and Porto, the latter with a much smaller output.
I should remind of the numerous small varieties of lettering and marks,
almost certainly marking different issues, though the sequences are not
known at present.
I find that a good sized chunk of my life is passed in the contemplation
of the various components of political organization.
What we seem to know of human history is a process of the amalgamation
of people's activity into larger units. A hypothetical original organization
back in pre-paleolithic times was the "band," what we see in remnant hunter-gatherer
groups. And it is constantly remarked that in such groups there is
a top-level "alpha" character, usually one of each gender, the rest of
the members organized more or less in a hierarchy of status. History
is the story of the careers of larger and larger groups until we arrive
at today, a time in which the largest groups are national and commercial,
with something even larger in the process of being assembled.
The hierarchical structure seems to be a constant feature of
human organization no matter what size the group. Ideologies arise
that attempt to ameliorate or abolish this feature, but they seem always
to produce a hierarchy of their own.
In earliest human times there may have been a substantial component
of meritocracy in selection of leaders, but by the start of history proper
with the invention of writing the tendency of leaders to attempt to perpetuate
their hold on power through their bloodline had become a dominant factor
in the affairs of our species. The "age of monarchs" seems to have
begun about 6000 years ago and continued unabated as the dominant form
of political organization until just about 200 years ago. At that
point two things had occurred that allowed a change. One was that
it had become obvious that governing had become too complicated for a single
person to have an unlimited monopoly on decision making, and the other
was that enough money was floating around out of the hands of the monarch
that the views of the "feral" money had to be considered.
Big families today continue to attempt to establish dynastic
arrangements, but they invariably run into the "dynastic problem," which
is that one rarely gets a continuation of good leadership qualities from
one generation to the next.
Back in 16th century Portugal, the time and place that is the
subject of this article, the "who" of government was the most important
thing. by law and custom as well as by facts on the ground. I had
closed last month at the end of the 15th century, when a ruthless monarch
with a penchant for killing his potential rivals died after naming a nephew
as his successor, his own son having died under mysterious circumstances
perhaps involving Portugal's neigbhbor and nemesis, Spain. The new
king was Manuel I, the date was 1495.
500 years later the last decade of the 15th century resonates
with us western European heritage types. Many of us know of that
momentous year 1492, if for various reasons depending on our ethnological
particulars. Portugal did not have a particularly special year that
year. Rather, they were having a special century. From about
1450 until the start of the 16th century Portugal was basically doing all
of the European exploration. By the middle of that century it briefly
controlled large swatches of the world's southern oceans and could pretend
that it was on top of the world, which everyone else, and especially Spain,
knew was not the case. Lot of money, showing off, living high.
Just about a century, after which the big guys got into the act and pushed
underendowed Portugal to the side. Courage is not enough. You
have to have resources, more importantly, discipline, more important still,
cunning.
By Manuel's accession Portugal was getting significant gold from
West Africa, a famous gold dust region, and pulling slaves out of the African
gene pool in some quantity. There was a lot of wood too, to make
more ships of course.
Some noteworthy events of Manuel's reign:
-in 1496, that's the year after the coronation, he decided he
wanted to marry the heir to the Spanish throne. It was like the two
royal families couldn't keep themselves from trying to merge. This
even though the Portuguese knew that it was fatal attraction. They
couldn't stop thinking the thought that they could marry their way out
of the problem, put a Portuguese king on the Spanish throne, make everyone
be nice. In their dreams. The Spanish looked at the same situation
and saw an annoyance they'd prefer to deal with once and never again.
Merger never would have worked. Later on they actually
tried it. It didn't work.
So, Manuel, as a sort of bouquet of roses to the girl's mother,
that monarch of most enormous prestige Isabella, decided to get rid of
his Jews, as the Spanish queen had in 1492. Manuel noticed though,
that Spain had kind of made a mess of the venture. A lot of the education,
and a lot of the business, happened to be sitting in the brains of those
Jews, and their absence had had a significant effect on the economy.
Manuel did it differently. Rather than push the Jews over the border
after stripping their property he set a date at which the Jews had to show
up somewhere for deportation. When they got there he didn't let them
leave until they had converted, and then he still didn't let them leave.
Evidently the conversion rate was extraordinarily high, possibly because
of the 30 year don't-ask-don't-tell period that was part of the deal.
Anyway, the Jews "disappeared" without disruption.
For centuries thereafter in many places in Europe and Africa,
the phrase "Portuguese businessman" was considered code for "Jew."
He got the girl.
-In 1498 Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama made it to India.
-In 1500 Cabral reached Brazil.
Serious money was poured into securing the Indian Ocean trade
route and by the end of Manuel's time Portugal had pretty much of a monopoly
in that region.
Sorry, too much history. Manuel coined a lot of coinage
to grease the wheels of economy, and there was plenty left over for showing
off. Check out those large gold "portugues" he made. 35 grams,
more than an ounce! Two types, on the front of one he is described
as king of Portugal and Algarve of course, but he also claimed lordship
of Guinea, Arabia, Ethiopia, and Persia. That was all hot air of
course, all they had was trading stations, but there were no other Europeans
around those places to contradict for the moment. There are a few
of these big gold coins that come in and out of the market from time to
time. Total wows.
Workhorse gold was the cruzado, a ducat more or less, various
privy marks to be found thereon, several show up for sale in a given year.
A rare quarter exists.
In silver there was also a showpiece coin, a half portugues,
same type as the gold one. The major commercial silver was the tostao,
analagous to the English testoon or shilling, though lighter of course
(English coins were always worth more than continentals). The dimes
and quarters of the day were vintems and halves. Collectors can obtain
examples of all of them. Low grade vintems can be relatively cheap.
There was no billon. The real, that had been billon in
olden times, was tried as a copper along with its half, but they didn't
catch on so they are hard to find. Large numbers of copper ceitils
were made and can be easily found today.
Three mints were active. Most coins were made in Lisbon,
a small quantity in Porto, a few in Ceuta, the Portuguese outpost in Morocco.
Well then. Manuel died in 1521 to be succeeded by his son
Joao, third Portuguese king of that name. The changeover was smooth,
Joao was an adult, healthy, legitimate, no contenders, all that good stuff.
And Portugal was getting toward the high point of its career. And
there was no serious war in Europe to get involved in. Should have
been a skating reign. But it didn't turn out that way.
Two tendencies and a fixation conspired to knock Portugal off
its high horse in the reign of Joao. The first tendency was that
everyone is drawn to success and wants to get in on it, thus the talent
is diluted as jerks and fools and incompetents of various kinds start cluttering
up the scene. Sound familiar? That happened. The other
tendency is that of contenders, seeing the winning team strut around, say
to themselves, "Oh, yeah? I'll show them." So the Portuguese
monopoly of the Indian Ocean trade was challenged by the Turks, the Spanish,
the French, the English, eventually the Dutch. So - pressure from
without, fraying from within.
Then there was the intense religiosity of the king. He
built more than enough religious edifices. And he messed up the Portuguese
religious establishment by bringing in the Jesuits. And he expelled
the Jews and brought in the Inquisition. None of these moves were
cheap, and they added up to a deficit in the end. Giant empire, no
money. By the end of Joao's reign in 1557 they were sitting around
trying to figure out what programs to cut.
The gold consisted of the giant portugues, the "standard" cruzado,
and special mid-weight series - the Sao Vicente and its half. Those
possessed of sufficiently deep pockets could expect some opportunities
to aquire examples within a normal lifetime. Silver was tostaos and
halves, vintems and halves, cinquinhos or quarter vintems, and reals.
There are several different minor series and many small varieties of legend,
privy marks, etc.
Joao's coppers can be interesting. In addition to the ordinary
and common ceitils there are larger and scarcer 3 and 10 real pieces, the
latter a rather astounding 36mm. Needless to note, but mentioned
anyway, these big coppers are quite hard to find.
All of Joao's coins were struck in Lisbon. Coinage was
struck for the first time in and/or for the colonies. I'll discuss
that development at greater length in future.
Joao's death provided a good illustration of the standard dynastic
problem of unsuitable succession. All of his children had predeceased
him and only a single grandchild had been produced. The kid was three
years old when the old man died, so there was a regent. Then there
was another. Today we would call his upbringing "dysfunctional."
It seems that he grew up to be something of a strange duck.
Marriages were proposed, but they fell through, and it seems that he had
some hand in making them not happen. Nevertheless, on attaining his
majority at age 14 he embarked on a career of patronage of education and
medicine and legal reform. Perhaps his most important action, from
a 21st century point of view, was the freeing of the Indian slaves (though
not the Africans) of Brazil. He got involved most unfortunately in
a dynastic squabble in Morocco, imagining he was leading a crusade.
He disappeared during a battle down there, and millenialist legends grew
up around his memory. Somewhere he sleeps, like king Arthur, like
Barbarossa, like the twelfth imam, someday to awaken and save Portugal
in its hour of need.
Sebastiao's mintmasters did not make those showy gold portugues
coins, and the cruzado disappeared as well. Instead there were the
Sao Vicente coins, the engenhoso - a successor to the cruzado, and a mid-sized
500 reis (or reais). You will find his gold coins if you are patient
and have money to spend.
Silver was the usual denominations, and, again, examples can
be found. Coppers were the large 10 reis, then 5 and 3 reis, real,
and ceitil, the last of that denomination. Generally, I think, the
Sebastiao coppers are harder to find than the silvers.
A few of the gold and silver coins have dates. All were
struck in Lisbon.
Sebastiao died (or disappeared) at age 24 without a successor.
This was the dynastic problem writ large. An uncle was brought in,
Enrique, who was a cardinal in the church. 63 years old on his accession,
Enrique attempted to get released from his vow of chastity so he could
get married quick and keep the dynasty going, but the pope was in cahoots
with Spain and dawdled. After two years Henry died.
His coins are gold 500 reis, silver tostaos and halves, and vintems.
They are distinctly hard to find.
I'm thinking about culinary metaphors.
Over the centuries the relationship of Portugal with Spain has
been pretty much salad dressing. Oil and vinegar sitting there in
an Iberian jar. Shake them, they get all tangled up with each other.
Let them sit a while and they separate again.
Thus the Hispano-Portuguese union of 1580-1640.
The death (or disappearance) in 1578 of young and childless Portuguese
king Sebastio in the midst of a battle in Morocco that he shouldn't have
been involved in was followed by some dithering amongst those in a position
to choose a successor. Successor there had to be. The concept
of a country without a monarch was not present in anyone's mind at the
time. It wasn't king or republic, it was king or anarchy, a country
lying there on the ground, waiting for some foreign king to come in and
take it. That's the way they thought back then, just about everyone.
The normal thing to do, back then and over there, when a monarch
died without a designated or obvious successor, was to poke around in the
family tree for a suitable relative. Usually the pokers didn't have
to look to hard. People would show up with their retinues and bribes
to present their case. In the Portuguese context, what with all the
marriages over the centuries, Spain was always there, big, arrogant, overbearing,
supercilious, and worst of all, Spanish.
In the case of the succession to ill-starred Sebastiao the council
of choosers had slim pickings and in the end picked an aged uncle who happened
to be a priest, a cardinal in fact. This was a notably insalubrious
choice, as the guy would have to get himself de-priested if he was going
to marry quickly and produce a legitimate heir. And he was in his
60s, which was really pretty old back then.
But he was better, from the Portuguese point of view, than Spain.
The priest-king, Enrique by name, duly put in his request for
relief of his vow of chastity and it was duly added to the pile of things
to do at the Vatican.
The pope, it seems, was rather friendly with the Spanish crown
at the time, Spain being the main muscle for the Catholic church in the
wars of the Reformation that were raging across Europe. No reason
not to do Spain a favor, especially if it involved doing nothing.
Enrique's petition sat on various desks until he died in 1580, leaving
the Portuguese succession once again up in the air.
Enrique had actually convened that assembly of notables who were
to decide what to do before he passed on. They put the government
in the care of their 5 top dogs and then proceeded to interview the applicants.
The basic requirement was lineage. Personal qualities were secondary.
The local guy, Antonio, had some degree of popularity, but was
illegitmate, so technically not in the running. He had, nonetheless,
some status on the ground. It was lower class support, however, without
much money. The upper classes, looking out for their own interests,
were leaning toward Spain, whose king, Philip II, actually had perhaps
the best claim to the throne, genealogically speaking. And all that
money his lobbyists were throwing around didn't hurt either.
Antonio played his hand anyway, declaring himself king late in
July of 1580. He managed to have a few silver coins struck in his
name in Lisbon before the deluge. Good luck finding one.
Spain used Antonio as a cover to do what it had been wanting
to do for, well, centuries. To save Portugal from the shame of an
illegitimate king a Spanish army crossed the border, engaged Antonio, and
drove him out of the country in less than a month. He retired to
Terceira island in the Azores, where he set up a government. Then
he left pretty quick to go to France, where he lobbied for support.
Promises were received, and some money, but nothing much in the way of
militararia, which was what he needed. His attempt to return to the
Azores in 1582 was blocked by Spain and his government there fell the year
after.
There are coins issued in Antonio's name from Angra mint in the
Azores. They were struck in gold, silver, and copper. A brief
search of the web turned up none for sale. One picture found on a
Portuguese website displayed a crude coin about 50% flat, noted as rare,
not for sale. Some of those coins are known with countermarks, possibly
less rare according to my outdated reference (Vaz). Hard to determine
relative rarities when there are none at all to be found.
Back to August 1580. Spain held the cards in Portugal by
way of military occupation. The bribing of the upper classes succeeded.
Philip II of Spain was "allowed" to become Philip I of Portugal on condition
that it remain a separate country with its own laws. OK, said Spain,
thinking meanwhile that it could take care of the details later.
The union started out in relative harmony, if with perhaps a
bit of wait-and-see. The new king upheld the terms of the settlement
and left Portugal to run itself and its colonies. Portuguese bigshots
were taken into the union government and Portuguese money was given a shot
at some of the Spanish business scene. There were rumors at one point
about a plan to move the capital from Madrid to Lisbon. On the surface
there was not that much for the Portuguese to complain about.
But the political landscape was disturbed to the detriment of
Portuguese interests. Traditional allies France and England became
enemies, joined after a few decades by the Dutch, newly independent after
a ferocious war of independence against Spain. The new adversaries
began to pick at the Portuguese colonies, plucking ripe chunks of India,
Ceylon, Malaya, Indonesia, and Brazil. Some of them were retaken
by Portugal later, others were lost forever. These overseas depredations
caused a serious loss of income for Portugal, putting it at an increasing
disadvantage vis a vis Spain. This monetary inequity was made worse
by the flow of bullion from Spanish America, which was starting to get
quite huge.
Philip I (II of Spain) died in 1598, succeeded by Philip II (III).
The new king's Portuguese policy was a continuation of his father's, that
being to make nice to the upper class and otherwise leave Portugal to (mis)manage
its own affairs. The decay therefore continued under a veneer of
OK-ness. "I guess we can put up with this" thought the average middle
class Portuguese (the poor Portuguese - who cared about them?)
Philip II (III) spent his reign and his money fooling around
and left the business of government to functionaries, who became corrupt
and stole things. His government vigorously prosecuted the wars of
the Reformation, turning the fabulous quantities of silver and lesser quantities
of gold coming in from the Americas into death and destruction all over
western Europe. This policy pretty much pushed Spain over the financial
edge and set it on a course that would lead to a condition of poverty and
second rate-ness that would last until the end of the 20th century.
But wait, there's more! The second Philip of Portugal died
in 1621 and was suceeded by yet another Philip, the III of Portugal and
IV of Spain. This one acceded at age 16 and chose to let things continue
as they were. That meant more decades of war and an increasingly
tenuous financial and political situation.
Well, never mind that. Let's get back to Portugal.
The new king started to push the Portuguese grandees out of the union government.
Then Spanish functionaries began to show up in the local Portuguese administration.
Taxes were raised to finance the ongoing wars, and some degree of unfairness
began to be noted; the levies on the Portuguese turned out to be consistently
higher than those on the Spanish. More and more the food for thought
in Portugal seemed to be grumble cake.
Eventually a proposal came out of Spain to abolish the union
and to make Portugal into a Spanish province. That pretty much killed
whatever support for Spain might have been left amongst the highest of
the high in Portugal and the dinner table discussions turned toward the
subject of "what are we going to do about this?"
In 1640 Spain was fighting three separate wars: with France,
with the Dutch, and the 30 years war in Germany. The Spanish government
raised taxes and set military quotas but Catalonia, with its anciently
separate government, refused to comply. Polite threats produced nothing,
nasty threats likewise, the central government invaded Catalonia, which
resisted big time. Now there were four wars.
Perfect time for Portugal to make its move, and it did.
In December of 1640 a coup was launched, immediately hailed by the people,
and a new king, Joao IV, duke of Braganza was chosen. Spain attempted
to crush the rebellion of course, but Portugal was the least of its problems
at the time. Essentially, Portugal was allowed to get away with it,
and 28 years later, with different kings in both countries, Spain threw
in the towel and admitted that yes, indeed, Portugal was its own country.
OK, let's talk about the coins of the six decades long Spanish
interlude.
The first thing to note is that with a very few exceptions all
of the coins just read "PHILIPPVS" without indicating which one, and that
none of them are dated. The reigns are distinguished by little details:
arrangements of dots and little crosses and circles and triangles here
and there, stops in the legends, that kind of thing. And a few of
them have an assayor initial in the Spanish style.
The next general observation is that there is no copper, only
silver and gold. Back in metallic currency times when copper was
absent it meant that the bottom end of the economy was being squeezed.
The bottom end people had to sign up with a smalltime money lender to run
their accounts for them. The money lenders charged for their services,
and some of them cheated of course, and that's how the squeeze was done;
on the up and up and on the down and out. You still see this in India,
where it's called debt bondage. We used to do it in the USA, where
it was called sharecropping and the "company town."
The coins pretty much look Portuguese, with the Portuguese arms
and the Jerusalem cross. Except for the king's name of course.
I guess you'd have to say that they really are Portuguese.
The gold denominations were 500 reis, 4 cruzados, 2 cruzados,
and 1 cruzado. The basic silver denominations were the tostao or
100 reis, the half tostao, and the vintem, also 80 and 40 reis coins struck
in the reign of the first Philip.
They are pretty hard to find. When the revolution came
in 1640, with overwhelming public support, no one, it seems had any incentive
whatsoever to keep the old coins lying around. Maybe they were declared
illegal, I was unable to find out in the time available. What certainly
happened is that the weights of the coins were changed and the union coins
disappeared from circulation. Apparently most of them were melted
rather than hoarded.
As might be expected, the reign of Joao IV was rather tumultuous.
There was the immediate war with Spain to attend to, which culminated,
in a military sense, in 1644 with the defeat of Spain. Then there
was all of the mess to deal with out in the colonies. To make a long
story short, perhaps to the point of meaninglessness, Portugal lost lost
Muscat to Oman and Malacca and Ceylon to the Dutch, but retook Angola and
Brazil from them. A mixed bag therefore in the colonies, but pretty
much Portugal ended up the worse. The days of glory were over.
Joao also did a fair amount of public building, not that he could
really afford it. And he was a serious amateur in music as composer
and critic. He died in 1656.
The coinage reflected the exigencies of the reign. There
were all these extraordinary expenses related to the war with Spain and
the colonial operations. These caused periods of tight money.
There was also the general inflation going on in Europe due to the enormous
influx of silver and gold from the Americas. You know all of those
thalers that started happening in the 17th century? American metal.
Didn't matter which side you were on. There were more round, flat
pieces of silver and gold moving around. But things cost more, so
what difference did it all make in the end?
Anyway, there was a series of adjustments to the Portuguese coinage
during Joao's reign. Weights changed, values of the coins changed,
ratios between gold and silver changed. Then they changed again.
And again. They did some countermarking, twice as it happened, then
they changed the values of the countermarked coins, then they replaced
them. It was kind of a mess, but similar things were going on all
over Europe at that time.
So for a number of decades you might get a coin in Portugal and
it might read LXXX or something like that and you'd have to go to a moneychanger
and give him a copper to find out what it was really worth that day.
In 1641 that LXXX might be countermarked "100," later that year it might
be going for 110 (reis), the next year it might have another countermark
"120", soon going for 125 or something. On the ground of course the
merchant was likely to tell you that the coin was too worn, he'll only
give you 112, you'd have to whine and complain, maybe you could get him
up to 117.
Ah, the good old days, when every transaction was like buying
a used car.
I propose to start this segment with a brief glance at the beginnings
of the Portuguese colonial coinage.
The Portuguese were the first practitioners of European colonialism
in the modern sense. How does the modern sense differ from the ancient
sense? Probably the only real difference was guns. Bunch
of people go somewhere, if they can they take over the place and do what
they want, if they aren't strong enough they deal with the locals until
they get strong enough, then they do as they please.
I think I can discern some national differences between the colonial
styles of the early European practitioners. The Spanish, for example,
definitely had gold fever. Everywhere they went that's what they
were looking for, and they only turned to commerce and production when
the metal didn't pan out. The Portuguese liked gold but they were
not nuts about it. One could almost say they liked slaves more.
Almost, but not quite, maybe. They had been in rather close association
with the Arabs in Africa for most of 1000 years, slavery was normal to
the Arabs, particularly they liked black slaves, especially in Africa where
such slaves were to be found. Why? It had been thought from
ancient Egyptian times that black Africans made better slaves by and large.
They were easier to catch, they tended to accept being slaves better than
some others, it was imagined that they worked harder and lasted longer.
The Romans used to think similarly of the Germans. The
Arabs at one point thought that about the Turks.
Well, the Portuguese, in their explorations, encountered the
practice of large scale slavery everywhere they went, it was different,
not being done to any great extent in Europe, it seemed like a good idea
to them. So they went for it. And because they wanted to keep
Portugal itself for the Portuguese, having just finished dealing with several
centuries of absorbing or expelling Arabs and Jews, they planted their
slaves far away in Angola, Brazil, etc. and set them to growing commodities,
cutting down trees, mining, etc.
OK, that's what they did in Neolithic Africa and South America.
In Arabia and Persia and India, well, you know what its like over there,
we (the Europeans) are still involved. There the locals are capable
and know what they're doing and you can't just walk all over them, you
have to actually deal with them. So they made contracts, for what
that was worth. And they fought battles, which they mostly won at
first until the locals figured out what to do and kicked them out.
In Africa and America the Portuguese were kind of slow getting
a coinage going. When you can just catch them and put them to work
what do you need coins for? So the coinage there only started when
the port cities got big enough to need aid-to-trade. Out in the countryside
they used whips instead of coins.
The early Portuguese overseas coins were in places like Malacca
and India, where they were already using coins, had customs offices, levied
taxes, all the modern bureaucratic stuff. The people on the land
they had leased or stolen had to be dealt with in some non-genocidal way,
the local politics and power demanded it. They had an economy, it
had to be in some way maintained, although that local economy was thought
of, normal for the time, as a resource to be mined for profits. They
were already using coins, the new bosses would continue to give them coins
if they knew which end was up.
So in Brazil, for example, they didn't do coins until the revolution
of 1640 when the Spanish were kicked out and then it was extremely rare
silver and gold. It was like they were declaring to the world: "Of
course we're a civilized part of independent Portugal, we have the money
to prove it!" And the governor would give the ambassador one of the
100 or so of those RRRR 1640 Brazil gold coins they made, and the ambassador
would send a nice report back home. No copper, you remember why.
But in Malacca the Portuguese coinage got started more than a
century before, in the 1520s, and they continued a coinage tradition in
tin that had gone round-and-flat when the local sultan converted to Islam
and brought in Muslim ways, which included money that we can easily recognize
as such, which is to say - coinage.
The pre-Portuguese Malacca coins were conveniently sized tin
coins, tin being the metal that was plentiful there, copper rare, gold
was made in large quantities by other jurisdictions nearby. The Portuguese
decided that they would monkey with the system to the extend of making
a denomination set instead of a single coin. They made coins up to
20 times the weight of the local Muslim coins. The idea seemed to
work. A lot of those coins seem to have been made.
The Malacca tin coins, formerly super-rare, came into the collector
market in quantity about 20 years ago. A bunch of the early arrivals
had a "pimply" surface and came with a story of having been brought up
from an ocean wreck. Since then more have appeared, now often without
the pimples.
There have been questions about the authenticity of all this
sudden Malacca tin stuff, but over the two decades in which they have been
around, I don't think I've run into definitely counterfeit specimens, and
it seems that the sentiment at large tends toward rather indifferant acceptance.
Actually I find them a bit difficult to sell, therefore the relative
bargain prices for many of them, at least or especially for the smaller
and lower grade. Few bucks for a 16th century coin. Every collector
should have one.
There are a very few examples of gold and silver coins from Malacca.
They are obviously of the "We make coins here" species, not made to be
spent. In all of my decades of dealing in Malacca I have had no Malacca
precious. My inquiries to suppliers of tin have always advised that
all of them are fake.
The tin coinage ended with the death of Sebastiao in 1578.
Portuguese Malacca endured through the Spanish occupation. Silver
and gold coins were then struck in Goa for use in Malacca. They are
supposedly impossible to acquire. The Spanish occupation ended in
1640. The year after Malacca was taken by the Dutch.
Coinage in India got started about the same time, approximately
the same way. Goa is in South India, where the money runs to tiny
gold, silver, and copper, with occasional multiples. The Portuguese
did exactly the same thing there as in Malacca, which was to make minor
multiples in copper and tin. Pretty quickly they got into gold and
silver, and a brief search of ebay showed one of those early gold coins,
1521 or thereabouts, relatively excellent condition, wants at least $1000,
$500 reserve, very reputable seller. I, on the other hand, once had
a pair of the early silvers in crappy corroded and cleaned condition, sold
them quickly for reasonable prices. Relatively speaking.
And then there is that veritable hoard of 18th century gold xerifins
of Goathat came out about a year ago. Four figure coins. Evidently
quite a few around, but they're getting absorbed.
During the Spanish occupation of 1580-1640 the Portuguese were
allowed to continue running their colonies in their way, more or less.
There was fitful Spanish interference, a general decline in liquidity,
some languishing of industry, stagnation of various sorts, the blahs reflected
in reduced quality and quantity of coinage. Then the 18th century
got going and there was plenty of commerce needing plenty of coins.
I think that's enough about the early colonials for now.
Let's go back and talk about the metropolitan Portuguese coinage of king
Joao IV, reigned 1640-56.
Back then the way finance ministers tried to control their money
supply was by fixing the value of the money of account, which in Portugal
was called reis, in terms of a certain weight (mark) of gold or silver
or both. When they had debts to pay they would typically decrease
the value of the account money, announcing that they would make more of
them per mark, therefore they were less valuable. If they were in
a strong position they could force repayment of their debts with the new
lower value reis, or maybe the creditor had clout and could force an auxiliary
payment to cover part of the inflation. Unfairness was just the way
it was back then.
The new nationalist Portuguese government decreed such an inflation
in 1641. It amounted to about 7% for silver, not too bad. In
1642 they increased the reis value of the gold coins by about 87%.
Wow. Then the next year they bumped up silver by another third, they
year after that another adjustment to the gold of almost 17%.
The government made its own coins and countermarked the old ones.
Decreed values were current where the government had presence, when the
cats were away the market played and the coins were worth what they were
worth.
The gold coins were generally the cruzado, its double, its 4,
all of these dated between 1642 and 1652. Cruzados can be obtained
by collectors, multiples less so. There was also a 16-cruzado called
conceicao, a presentation piece, pretty much or entirely unavailable.
All of the gold was struck at Lisbon.
Silver denominations were the vintem of 20 reis, its half and
double, the tostao of 100 reis, its half, double and quadruple (also called
cruzado), and a silver conceicao valued at 600 reis. Some of the
silvers are dated, others not. Any of the silvers might be found
except for the conceicao. Coins from branch mints at Porto and Evora
are at least scarce.
Copper denominations were the 5, 3, 1.5, and 1 real. The
1 is rare, the rest of them are not, but you're much more likely to find
a silver.
The various countermarks are kind of catch as catch can.
I think one doesn't really see them that often. At least I don't.
Joao IV had a number of children. Several died young.
The one we want to concentrate on is the second son, Afonso. This
kid had a fever when he was 3 years old that left him half paralyzed and
brain damaged. Bad luck for Portugal when his older brother died
and he became the heir.
When his father died in 1656 Afonso was minor, crippled, and
mentally incompetent, or was so judged by the people who mattered.
His mother was made regent. She successfully concluded the war with
Spain with the signing of a treaty that recognized Portuguese independence
in 1668. This success was balanced by the loss of Ceylon to the Dutch
and the cession of Tangier and Bombay to England as dowry for Afonso's
sister who was marrying English Charles II. It wasn't a total loss,
because England then brokered a deal in which the Dutch agreed to get out
of Brazil.
Palace intrigue produced an anti-regent party that managed to
get Afonso to send his mother to a convent in 1662. 3 years later
a marriage was arranged for the king, annulled 2 years later when he could
not consummate. The girl then married Afonso's younger brother, Pedro,
who wangled his way to the title of prince regent, took over the government,
and exiled Afonso to Terceira island in the Azores. The king was
allowed to return to Portugal in 1683, just in time to die. Pedro
became king.
Well, then, Afonsine coins comprised both new issues and countermarks.
There was a break in 1662 when an official revaluation of the gold was
made, augmented in 1663 when the weights of the silver were adjusted downward.
The pre-reform gold denominations were the normal cruzado, double and quadruple.
After the reform they were renamed "moeda" (coin), half, and quarter, but
they weighed the same. They looked pretty much the same too, minor
differences. But the reis value of the reform coins was 14% higher.
Of course there were the old coins still circulating, and some of them
were brought in and countermarked with their new values.
The old style silver was based, as under Joao, on the vintem
of 20 reis and the tostao of 100 reis, with halves, doubles, and quadruples
of each. The denominations were continued after the reform but the
coins were about 25% lighter. And the numerous countermarks of course,
not only on old Portuguese coins but on Spanish too. You will find
coins with more than one countermark.
All the coins were struck in Lisbon. There was no copper.
It should be possible to find representative coins of this reign.
A denomination set will be difficult. The nature of countermarks
makes the idea of a comprehensive collection rather oxymoronic. Afonsine
silver coins tend to appear one at a time in most cases, often quite worn,
in a lot of the more common coins of his successors.
When Pedro took over the government he styled himself "prince
regent" while Afonso was still alive and issued coins in his name so indicating.
That was pretty unusual, having someone named on the coins who was not
the king. I'll pick up there next time.
I went poking around for interesting Portuguese coins on Ebay
this past month. Found a few of mild interest. Particularly,
there was one of the countermarked coins of the 17th century post-Spanish
period, decent condition. Starting bid was $99.50 or so, seller in
USA. One day left, no bids. I sent him an email, would he take
$75.00 if it didn't sell. He favored me with the courtesy of a reply.
No, he had a local buy offer at $81.00, also that "it is one of the rarest
of Portuguese coins." Well, that was a laugh, tiny little one.
My general rule of thumb - if its there its not rare. But never mind.
It sold. For $99.50.
I had mentioned in recent months that the gold cruzados of the
16-17th centuries are the most common Portuguese gold coins of that period
and should be obtainable. But, truth to tell, I have not actually
found much of anything for sale along those lines in recent months.
Probably missed something. And probably the most common European
gold coin of that period is, um, Spanish, or just maybe Hungarian.
Right now is the second Portuguese boom in my lifetime, or perhaps
second and a half. I think I remember one in the late 70s, then there
was gathering of steam in the 90s, now is now. In the last few years
prices rose across the board as Portuguese everywhere got interested in
their money and developed the scratch to collect. The higher prices
brought stuff out of the woodwork and the bank vaults. What we have
now is a split in the market, with good stuff going out of sight and common
stuff in oversupply.
Take, for example, a certain colonial coin: Timor 50 centavos
1970. Few years ago the SCWC price was $30.00 I think. I was
the recipient of a few rolls of them in BU, enough that I whined and complained
and got them for something like $1.00 each. Now the SCWC price is
$4.50, I still have most of mine. If I offered to pay $1.00 each
I would probably get 10,000 of them. Please, take them off my hands,
thankyou. Can't give them away.
On the other hand, a 1935 1 escudo on Ebay, overgraded, went
above SCWC for the grade it was advertized as, which it wasn't. To
me, as it happened. Wantlist purchase. 13 other bidders.
More on this coin in a future article.
Good stuff is hot.
OK, return to the subject at hand, which is the late 17th century
Portuguese coinage.
Pedro, younger brother of damaged king Afonso VI, got for himself
through intrigue the title of Prince Regent and enough power to send the
king out to the Azores for 16 years of therapeutic banishment, allowing
to return to Lisbon in 1683, just in time to die. Then Pedro had
himself a coronation ceremony and became king Pedro II.
He suffered a stroke of luck in the year of his accession with
the discovery of major silver deposits in Brazil. The money coming
out of the ground eventually (1697) gave him the wherewithal to dismiss
the Cortes, the advisory assembly that he had to placate in order to get
them to give him money. The Brazilian metal allowed him to ignore
them, which he did.
He ended up spending most of that money on the War of the Spanish
Succession, which was a long fracas involving France, England, and Austria.
Portugal started out negotiating with France, but pretty soon went with
England and Austria and joined in the invasion of Spain in 1703.
Pedro gloriously set out on the warpath (not in person), his armies mucking
around in Spain, the conflict dragging on beyond his death (1706), Madrid
gloriously captured, then lost, but France eventually won the war (1715).
The coins. Pedro produced numismata in his name as prince
regent from 1667-1683. There was gold, silver, copper. Gold
was revalued twice, silver once. There are countermarks associated
with these adjustments. 3 different gold denominations, 6 different
silver, 4 copper, slight differences in types after each revaluation.
All are dated, all struck in Lisbon. The entire prince regent series
is rare in my experience. Perhaps somewhere, over the rainbow, there
is a land of affordable prince regent coins, but I've never blundered into
even one in my fevered numismatic thrashings.
For Pedro as king there was one revaluation of both gold and
silver in 1688, 20% no less. There are 3 gold denominations, a bunch
of silvers, 4 coppers. Most of the coins are dated, a few small silvers
are not. There are countermarks of the 1688 revaluation. During
this reign there were long periods during which the value of the coin was
different from what was written on it. The silver cruzados of 1688
and later, big 2/3 crowns, have "400" (reis) on them but were worth 480,
etc. Just imagine, every quarter officially worth 30 cents, what
fiscal games were played! This official discrepancy became a traditional
practice for about 100 years.
Most of the coins were made in Lisbon, a few silvers in Porto,
a few golds in Rio in Brazil, which was getting to be a regular colony
rather than a gigantic slave operation.
In my experience some of the small silver coins of Pedro II can
be obtained, usually in disappointing condition. The copper is scarce
at best, the gold is perhaps the opposite of common. I think the
fact that late in the reign the king was hemorrhaging money on that war
of his might account for the scarcity of his coins today.
Pedro's 17 year old son became the next king, Joao V, in 1706.
Aside from the several years it took to wind down the Portuguese role in
the War of the Spanish Succession the situation was generally salubrious
during his long reign. His father had a flush of Brazilian silver
to play with. Joao had gold and diamonds, bunches. As a result
he didn't have to make any deals with anyone in Portugal and he ruled as
an absolute monarch, somewhat in emulation of contemporary Louis XIV in
France. There was a big new palace, elaborate court ceremonial to
keep the nobles occupied. But unlike the French Sun King Joao avoided
war, choosing instead to spend similar enormous amounts as bribes to the
church to get his country recognized as sovereign. How so?
The Spanish had relinquished their claim to Portugal in 1668, but Joao
didn't get the Vatican to sign off on that until 1748, two years before
his death.
The coinage is complex, interesting, and of much greater availability
than previous few reigns. There were several revaluations of the
gold and silver during the reign, and they continued the game of valuing
the coins higher than their expressed "face" value. There are no
countermarks during the reign though, so one could contemplate the possibility
of assembling a complete set.
The silver brings forward the old designs: big square crowned
shield and Jerusalem cross mostly, crowned Roman numerals and simple cross
for the small ones, cross and armillary sphere for the tiny vintem.
A few of the little ones are undated. Coppers started with crowned
J.V types, switched to a crowned fancy shield in 1723.
The gold started out "normal" but switched over to a portrait
type in 1722, the first such since medieval times. The new coins
were completely different denominations of different weights than the old
coins. It was a matter of prestige. French Louis was doing
it. Joao was going to do it too.
The portrait gold coins came in various sizes from the very rare
8 escudos to the also rare 1/4. The middle values are fairly common
as types, even if they cost hundreds for the small ones and a thousand
or more for the 4 escudos. The same types were struck in Lisbon,
Porto, and three Brazilian mints, and maybe the Brazilian ones are a bit
more common.
The next king was Jose I. He was 36 years old in 1750 when
he took the throne, an absolutist in the fullness of his strength.
He immediately put a powerful guy, the marquis of Pombal, in charge of
internal affairs. Pombal does not show up in the coinage, but his
influence was everywhere during his tenure. A lot of reforms were
carried out in finance and administration. Modernization was a necessity.
All the other European countries were doing it, Portugal was lagging anyway,
better do something. Pombal was efficient but he had a nasty streak
and became quite unpopular as time went on.
Five years into Jose's reign an earthquake struck Lisbon.
Part of the event was a tidal wave. The city was almost completely
destroyed. That put a wrinkle in the plans. But there was all
that gold coming out of Brazil, they started rebuillding right away.
I bet you if Hurricane Katrina had hit Washington they wouldn't be fiddlefaddling
around. Well, the king was living in Lisbon. They put it back
together on the QT, which meant a couple of decades, you know how it is.
Marble and all that in a severe, earthquake resistant style that has come
to be known as Pombaline. Meanwhile the king developed a morbid fear
of stone walls and chose to live in tents for the rest of his life.
Jose's coinage continued the last iteration of his father's,
with portrait gold and what had become "standard" silver and copper.
They look the same, only the name is different. There were no revaluations.
You will note that the gold does not have a value on the coins. The
silver has the traditional undervaluation, it says 400 (reis) but its really
480. They were made in Lisbon and Brazil. You can find these
coins, and in nice condition to boot. Copper 5 (V) and 10 (X) reis
are common enough that they still occasionally turn up in junk boxes (in
appropriate condition of course). There are enough of of Jose's coins
that date collection can be contemplated. Of course you will not
succeed, probably. But before this reign there would be no point
in even trying.
Jose's children were all girls. He had named the eldest
to be his heir as one of his first royal acts, and she became Queen Maria
I in 1777. First thing she did was get rid of Pombal.
Maria was 43 years old on her accession. As time passed
she became unstable personality-wise, and in 1799 she surrendered her official
functions to her son, Joao, who became prince regent. Just in time
too, I suppose. Napoleon was in the early phase of his ascendancy.
So, though she continued as queen until her death in 1816, she was out
of the picture, and off the coinage as it happens, after 1799.
Maria's coinage was a continuation of the regime of the previous
half century. An interesting feature was the joint portrait of her
and her husband, Pedro III, on the gold until his death in 1786, their
names together on the silver and copper. Pedro did not participate
in government in any way, confining himself to ceremonies, production of
offspring, and moral support. Spouses on coins were an occasional
feature of European coinage at that time. Hey, maybe couple portrait
coins would make an interesting collection, eh what? Might get expensive
though, big coins, gold, marriage and anniversary commemoratives.
Anyway, the dual portrait gold of Maria and Pedro is not more
expensive than the subsequent gold with Maria alone. But it is after
all gold, so its not cheap.
Maria's silver is available. The copper is common.
There is an ongoing debate amongst historians regarding the influence
of individuals in the great sweep of history. The more process oriented
like to imagine that things would have turned out substantially the same
if the various key individuals of a time or place had not been there.
If not Einstein then someone. Pasteur or someone. Bill Gates
or someone.
Maybe so in the sciences. Maybe so. Though I can't
avoid the thought that someone in Eurasia invented the wheel, but in the
Americas no one did.
But someone else rather than Hitler? Stalin? Chingiz
Khan? Lincoln? I kind of think probably not. If Douglass
had been president in 1861 things obviously would have been different.
No Chingiz no Mongol empire. Much as my egalitarian soul might wish
that everyone is in some way "the same" it appears that it is, in fact,
not so. There are "great" people. They do "great" things.
Which brings us to Napoleon and his effect on Portugal, which
had an effect on Brazil, the results still affecting us today.
1799: Queen Maria of Portugal went effectively nuts and reliquished
her powers to her son Joao. Napoleon, meanwhile, returned from Egypt
to France and launched his coup against the Directory.
1800: Napoleon campaigned in Italy. As a side project,
a trifle really, he demanded, in concert with his buddy in Spain, Manuel
de Godoy, that Portugal join the continental boycott of England.
Portugal had been allied with England for more than half a millennium,
so that really bit. France also demanded the cession of the majority
of its territory. Naturally, Portugal refused.
1801: Napoleon was still in Italy, but Spain went merrily invading
Portugal. Portugal was trounced, lost a bit of land to Spain, and
agreed to join the anti-British "Continental System."
Portugal observed the terms of the treaty until the battle of
Trafalgar in 1805, which the French lost. Portugal then resumed relations
with England. Napoleon was annoyed, he'd have to teach them a lesson.
In 1807 Napoleon launched the Peninsular War, sending troops
into Portugal through allied Spain. There was no effective resistance.
The Portuguese royal family packed up and moved to Brazil on ships provided
by the British. A year later Britain invaded Portugal and kicked
out the French, but meanwhile Napoleon had overthrown the Spanish monarchy
and had given the throne to his brother, producing a fierce rebellion in
Spain.
More backing and forthing ensued on the Iberian peninsula.
By 1810 the French were out of Portugal, and by 1814 the British mostly,
along with Portuguese and Spanish troops, had driven them completely out
of the peninsula. Much bloodshed and destruction. Everything
a mess. The Spanish colonies in America all in revolt. The
Portuguese court quaking in its slippers in Brazil.
Portugal had not been in such good shape before the French meddling.
Couple of centuries of mismanagement, and then there was that earthquake
that levelled Lisbon in 1755. They had continued making coins through
all of this turmoil, but it had been hit or miss. During the French
intervention period of 1800-1810 coinage production became exceptionally
spotty. A few coppers in 1800, 1801, and 1804, all scarce relative
to the common coins of the late 18th century. A few gold coins from
1802 on, "common" denominations being the 400 and 6400 reis. "Large"
silver 200 and 400 reis numerous dates from 1801 on, but despite their
relatively low prices in the Standard Catalog, they are not so easy to
find. The small silver was undated through the 1830s, who knows when
they were actually struck, they're not all that common either.
The British were substantially running the country, more or less,
after about 1808 or so, and things began to regularize a bit. It
was not the British government though, rather, it was a bunch of merchants.
A lot of laissez-faire was going on, that being the economic fashion of
the time. Portuguese coins being rather scarce, as we can see today,
and British coins of the time also, except for those heavy coppers that
stayed home, you can imagine what kind of money they were using.
Spanish colonial, same as everyone else in almost the whole world.
Am I wrong? There really doesn't seem to be much Portugal
on the market for the first decade or two of the 19th century.
An interesting feature of this early 19th century coinage were
the various large and thick bronze 40 reis coins. Maybe they got
the idea from the British cartwheels. They are fairly common by and
large, but only in low grade. The price spreads in the catalogs range
from under $10 in VG to well over $100 in XF. Well, those bottom
end prices are perhaps a bit old, should be higher, but on the other hand
I've never actually seen one in XF. No, actually I have. On
Ebay. Lovely XF, except for the extensive light corrosion pleasantly
covered by the Renaissance wax.
Another interesting feature of the period was the abominable
slave trade. Britain got out of the business in 1807, but look at
this: there's the British governor of Portugal, and Portugal had always
been a bigger slaver than Britain. So the British bowed out, leaving
the Portuguese to run it all, more or less, except for the Americans of
course, in a relatively small way. But who's running Portugal?
Funny thing, that.
Also notice that they really weren't doing silver crowns in Portugal,
never really had. At that time no one needed to make crowns if they
didn't want to. The Spanish were supplying the world. The Americans
weren't making crowns either, except to demonstrate sovereignty.
But they were making them in Brazil. Overstriking Spanish dollars.
For facilitation of commerce.
Napoleon was gone after 1814, Europe slowly picking up its pieces,
Portugal with its annoying British governor. A clamor arose for the
return of the king, no, prince regent from Brazil, but it seemed he rather
was enjoying himself in Rio. The situation festered. What should
have happened didn't happen.
The old queen died in 1816 and prince regent Joao became king.
He changed the structure of the country so that Brazil, where he was, stopped
being a colony and became part of the kingdom, "just like" metropolitan
Portugal. He figured that meant he didn't have to go home because
he was home. Because he said so. Ah, the joys of absolute monarchy!
It also meant that Brazil could trade on its own instead of shipping
everything through the homeland. Brazilian oomph had been keeping
Portugal afloat for a couple of centuries. Turn down that tap, things
got dry pretty quick.
For the Portuguese court things were going good in Brazil.
They monkeyed with the currency to support their lifestyle, which is where
those countermarked coins came from. New law says the money is now
worth twice what it was yesterday, couple of weeks or months or years of
confusion to be taken advantage of. There was so much more to do
in Brazil! And so much more to do it with. Portuguese coins
of the time may be scarce, but Brazils are not hard to find, pretty easy,
in fact, some of them, and the countermarked coppers are downright common.
Another funny thing: look at the Portuguese coins of 1818-24.
Back of the Portuguese arms are the Brazilian arms. One might almost
think that the heraldry was implying precedence for Brazil, mightn't one?
That formulation disappears with the death of king Joao in 1826.
Makes sense, Brazil was independent by then.
The combined arms coins of about 1818 to 1825 are neither more
nor less common than preceding and following types. They will all
go higher than the catalog. A gold peca (6400 reis) of 1822 in XF
sold on Ebay late July, 2007. Catalog is $550, the common year.
It went for over $900.
The practice of Brazil bypassing Portugal in commerce got the
Portuguese to grumbling. They asked the king to come home but he
didn't want to. Meanwhile, a tide of constitutionalism was rising
in Europe. It reached Spain in 1820 and quickly passed on to Portugal.
Nonviolent protests of various kinds pushed the British governor out of
Lisbon, and the king was asked to return from Brazil. A constitution
was written, the powers of the church curbed, the press freed.
An important economic goal of the revolutionaries was more problematic.
All that liberal stuff was fine and dandy maybe, but they also wanted to
close down the free Brazilian trade and make everything go through Portugal
again. Made sense from the metropolitan perspective. They had
made Brazil after all, they needed that money, ungrateful wretches.
In Brazil they didn't see it that way. They saw it more like the
Americans of the late 18th century.
The royal family was on both sides, tempermentally, philosophically,
economically. When the king returned to Portugal he had an understanding
with his son Pedro that the boy would become king of Brazil should it come
to that. Keep it all in the family, one way or another. Let
the Brazilians think they were free, what difference did it make?
King Joao returned to Portugal in 1821. A few months later
the revolutionary assembly abolished the kingdom of Brazil and returned
it to its former colonial status. Troops were sent out from Portugal
to enforce the new status. Prince Pedro was ordered back to Portugal.
Over months of dithering and maneuvering, accompanied by scattered violence,
Pedro gradually moved toward independence, finally culminating in a full
break, recognized by king Joao in 1825, shortly before his death.
Well the succession was messed up. Older son Pedro was
king of independent Brazil, the Portuguese didn't want him. Younger
son Miguel had conspired with his mother against the constitution, blood
had been shed, he was hiding out in Austria, the Portuguese didn't want
him either. In the event, Pedro accepted the Portuguese crown, which
was an immediate problem, because the Brazilian constitution forbade him
from wearing two crowns. He liked Brazil better, and held the Portuguese
title for only a few months of 1826, abdicating in favor of his daughter
Maria, 7 years old, with brother Miguel, the conspirator, as regent.
Part of the deal was that he was to marry Maria, his niece, when she became
14 in 1832. This regency does not show up on the coinage, which continued
in Pedro's name through 1828.
Still with me? Complications ensued in the execution of
this so-called plan. Pedro had problems in Brazil both political
and economic, and Miguel continued to conspire against the consitution
in favor of his absolutist dreams. The situations on both sides of
the ocean deteriorated. Violence of various kinds developed.
As soon as Miguel got back to Portugal in 1828 he declared himself king.
More resistance. By 1832 there was a fairly big civil war going on
in Portugal. Pedro, meanwhile, had abdicated the Brazilian throne
and returned to the Azores, where he prepared forces to go against Miguel.
While he was there he had some coins struck in Maria's name, made in England
by the way. He had British help of various kinds. By 1834 he
had the upper hand. Miguel was forced into exile again and Maria
became queen.
By and large Pedro's coins are a bit scarcer than Joao's, and
Miguel's are a bit scarcer still. Maria's are more common.
You will find coppers of all of these personages, the small ones maybe
in decent condition, the larger ones usually low grade. Silver coins
are generally not so common, especially these days in nice grade, when
the Portuguese are going after their coins. The gold of this period
is pretty much not there to be found.
Yet another funny thing: Maria was crowned in 1834 but there
are coins for her dated 1833. Don't know that story, no time to research.
One of the first things Maria and her people did when they got
their hands on the wheel was to plan a conversion from the messy currency
they had to a more rational system. Remember that for several centuries
the coins had been lying, officially worth more than they said they were
worth. This was done so that the coin issuers could play fiscal games
when they felt like it. To interpret the practice as a sort of formalized
and traditional corruption could be a tenable position. Portugal
was not the only nation to do that.
But the vastly increased expenditures of the 19th century demanded
a better control of the treasury, and the fashionable constitutionalism
demanded some degree of accountability from the controllers. Thus
the reform.
For better or worse I've cribbed a lot of my Portuguese history
from Wikipedia. It has been pretty good for me until now. The
detail has been adequate for my purposes. Random fact checking has
revealed occasional opinion but substantial accuracy. Imagine my
chagrin when I went to Wiki for the second half of the 19th century and
found essentially nothing but a bunch of titles with nothing following!
Some problem with 1834-1900? I got out my 15 year old Collier's
Encyclopedia. Astoundingly, it seems that nothing of lasting significance
happened in that period. They tried, but little was accomplished.
Opportunities were missed, projects launched but not completed, a couple
of civil wars almost happened, the country almost went bankrupt, almost
occupied part of what is now Congo Democratic Republic, and so forth.
It made me think of the term of one of our American presidents: Benjamin
Harrison. Can't recall what happened during his tenure? That's
what I mean.
The main thing was probably the economy. Portugal had lost
access to Brazilian money, didn't have much going for it at home (port
wine, cork), the major foreign holdings were Angola and Mozambique.
The African colonies had wood and they were working on agriculture, but
there was no money, it was pretty slow.
Oh, and they finally got around to abolishing slavery in 1836.
But not in Brazil, where a lot of the business of Portugal still was getting
done, independence notwithstanding. What exactly did that mean then,
the abolition of slavery? Well, specifically, it meant that they
had to start paying people in the African colonies, which meant that they
had to invest. And they did. With borrowed money, a lot of
it from England and France, later on from Germany. They built buildings,
railroads, port facilities.
But money was consistently tight in Portugal. There was
bickering, corruption, reform and pseudo-reform, all carried out in depressed
circumstances. And there was bad luck too. A good king died
young. That was Pedro V, who started doing interesting things but
succumbed to cholera. Successor Luis was not interested in politics,
thus two decades of drift as the politicians duked it out.
Maybe someone will write in to remonstrate. What about
the epic conflict of the Septembrists and the Chartists? What about
the Pink Map of Africa? The German plot to force national bankruptcy
and seize the colonies? Or the Spanish plot to annex Portugal?
Well, I would respond, what about them? None of those things came
off. A lot of talk. There were also at least two civil wars
that almost happened but didn't. What happens is what counts, right?
Not what get talked about. Maybe later, maybe. But on the spot,
at the time, I think its the actual events that draw the interest.
No?
So, Maria II was created queen by her father, emperor of Brazil,
barred by constitutional strictures from taking the Portuguese crown as
well. One of the early things her constitutional government did was
reform the coinage. All of the Spanish dollars in the country were
supposed to be rounded up and countermarked to fix their value, a few foreign
gold coins too. Then they were pulled in and melted. These
countermarked 8 reales are uncommon, maybe a couple of them show up in
a year. Similar countermarks of the Philippines, struck about the
same time by different people, are far more common.
The reform did away with the legal fictions inherent in the Portuguese
coins, the official values being higher than what was stamped on them.
It was as if Portugal was joining the modern world. "Decimal" is
probably the wrong way of describing the change, because there were no
fractions of the reis. But the new system was certainly base 10.
And there was actually continuity of denominations to some extent.
5, 10, 20, 50 reis coins had all been seen before in the lives of the users.
But the new ones meant what they said.
I always like to look around at neighboring currencies and those
of the major trade partners when there is a reform, to see if the reformers
are doing anything to coordinate. The obvious suspects would be Spain,
Britain, Brazil, maybe Mexico, maybe France. Nothing. The Portuguese
reform seems to have been floated entirely on its own.
Maria's reform denominations were 5, 10, 20 reis in copper, 100,
500, and 1000 reis in silver, 2500 and 5000 reis in gold, with a single
year gold 1000 reis toward the end of her reign. The copper types
are common in circulated condition, silver minors generally not rare, gold
types mostly obtainable. These are normal 19th century European issues,
technically excellent, showing up in the normal distribution of grade ranges.
Prices in the Standard Catalog for higher grades should be considered low.
Unfortunately shortlived Pedro V (reigned 1853-61) struck no
copper. Silver continued Maria's denominations and added 50 and 200
reis. Gold comprised 1000, 2000, and 5000 reis. Pedro's coins
are rather scarce on the ground in my experience.
Luis (1861-89), Pedro's brother, struck 3, 5, 10, and 20 reis
in copper, with a resizing and modernization of the coins in 1882.
They tend to be common in low grades, especially the 20 reis. High
grades are typically difficult. Silver 50, 100, 200, and 500 reis
can be found in decent condition, the odd specimen occasionally appearing
in high grade, uncirculated rare. Gold 2000, 5000, and later 10,000
reis will appear from time to time. Typical grades will be VF-XF,
uncirculated uncommon.
The next king, Carlos, well, this is interesting. Collier's
Encyclopedia: "...did much to restore Portugal's international status."
Wikipedia: "...vastly extravagant... wastefulness and extramarital affairs...sealed
the fate of the Portuguese monarchy." Where lieth the truth?
His subjects grumbled mightily to the point that he dissolved parliament
and appointed a dictator to rule. After 2 years of dictatorship Carlos
was assassinated (1908). That's what the Chinese call the Will of
Heaven.
The coins of Carlos are copper 5, 10 and 20 reis, silver 50,
100, 200, 500, and 1000 reis, the 50 and 100 replaced by copper-nickel
from 1900, no gold. You will occasionally run into these coins in
Unc. You want to take note of the first Portuguese commemoratives:
the 1898 "discovery" of India trio. Type set completely doable, dates
- don't know. Probably a few toughies, especially these days, and
one impossible (1900 1000 reis).
The next and last king, Manuel II, was 19 on accession.
He lacked the experience and the connections to hold the monarchy together,
lasted 2 years, and then was forced out by a military mutiny that became
a coup d'etat.
Manuel's coins were bronze 5 reis, silver 100, 200, 500, and
1000 reis. Not rare, but there is buyer pressure, they like them
in Portugal, high grades are undervalued in the SCWC.
OK, they had a messy and contentious republic starting in 1910,
several dictatorships to restore order, the last on was pretty totalitarian,
banning everything, rewriting history, order before development, lasted
about 5 decades. Ideology aside, Portugal managed to remain formally
neutral while materially aiding traditional ally Britain during World War
II. None of the history was reflected in the coinage.
First thing the republicans did was replace the reis with the
decimal escudo. They didn't get around to it until 1914, when they
put out a silver escudo, essentially the weight of the contemporary Spanish
5 peseta coin. The coin notes the founding of the republic and is
backdated to 1910. It is common.
Regular coins came out starting in 1915, various denominations
in bronze, copper-nickel, and silver. The important thing to know
about these republican coins is that people in Portugal collect them by
date. There are substantial offerings on Ebay any day you care to
look. They comprise common dates and semi-keys. A lot of them
are being sold by Portuguese, many are being sold to their countrymen.
I'd say even that common dates are in oversupply. You might find
that there is a tendency towards overgrading with those guys, but the one
I got some things from made it right when I complained.
There are also keys in the early republicans; things like the
1918 2 centavos in iron, and the 1922 5 centavos. You've noticed
how impossible those wartime iron coins are in uncirculated, haven't you?
The keys do not show up very often. I mean things like the 1922 20
centavos. None for sale.
A general overhaul of module and design was begun in the 1920s
and continued on into the 1940s, then stablizing somewhat until the overthrow
of the dictatorship in 1974. These are the girl head bronzes, lady
head copper-nickels, both types replaced by the 5 shields of the national
arms, and the boat silver multiple escudos, modified to copper-nickel in
the 1960s. You know these coins. They show up in junk boxes,
mixed packets, 3-ring binders. But there are keys amongst these otherwise
common types. I managed to get one, the 1935 1 escudo, for a client.
Evidently that's one of the easy keys. 2 1/2 escudos 1937, SCWC $1500.00
in Unc, no, none for sale.
Some commemoratives were struck during the dictatorship, denominations
as high as 50 escudos, all easy to find. You will note "matte" versions
of some of these, that they were made "on private contract." I haven't
run into any of these, but more about that private contract business below.
The dictatorship was overthrown by a military coup in 1974.
It put in a provisional government and took steps to grant independence
to the colonies. An election in 1975 gave various kinds of leftists
the upper hand. A "socialist" constitution was adopted in 1976.
The country has evolved since then toward what we think of as "normal,"
parliamentarianism, popular representation, non-political military, that
kind of good stuff. The economy has evolved as well, to the point
that Portugal is considered to be "doing all right" these days.
Post-revolutionary minors are described in the Standard Catalog
as being made of "nickel-brass," but in practice they act like ordinary
brass, which means that they have a tendency to develop nasty black spots.
On the high end they really went to town on commemoratives in the '80s,
many different types in series every year in denominations up to 1000 escudos.
Some were made, Isle of Man style, in copper-nickel, silver, and gold.
Typically the precious versions of these coins are not on the market, and
when they do show up the silvers go 2-4 times spot, gold maybe a little
bit over spot. The Portuguese don't seem to care much about these
coins, and neither, apparently, does anyone else. The normal metal
versions are mostly common, and mostly they don't sell.
Now about those "private contract" coins. From about the
1860s the Lisbon mint was making, and sometimes contracting with other
mints, to make patterns and things they called "provas," which were generally
normal coins struck with new dies and stamped "PROVA." These were
supposed to be presented for inspection by relevant officials, but some
of them, especially from the 1950s on, were struck in quantities sufficient
to become marketable, which was apparently occasionally done out the back
door of the mint, as it were. There is some discussion of whether
or not some of these provas were sort of made to order.
There are also "trial strikes," which typically have one good
die impression and something abnormal on the other side, usually nothing,
and maybe in the wrong, usually base metal. Again, some of them were
made in suspiciously large quantities, could not possibly have an official
purpose, must have been some kind of bootleg retailing operation by mint
employees or something like that.
And another category - some miniature coins, most or all aluminum,
struck in the 1970s for unknown reasons in unknown but significant quantities,
generally not available these days, and not in the Standard Catalog either.
But they do exist.
And the mint sets and the proof sets, not seen very often, prices
tend to be high. I think they like the proof sets in Portugal.
The mint sets, I don't know.
On to the euro coins. Apparently they have been making
the circulation coins every year, and mint sets, and proof sets, and most
of them seem not to have been listed in the Standard Catalog yet.
They have also been making multiple euro commemoratives in .500 fine silver,
sterling proofs, and some in gold. I have seen a couple of the .500
fine coins with real circulation on them. INCM, by the way, means
Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, which is bureaucratese for the Lisbon
mint. I have noticed approximately no interest in these euro commemoratives
amongst the collectors.
A brief mention of tokens. As mentioned variously before,
coinage production was spotty in Portugal for, well, all of its history.
In any given year, or decade for that matter, they'd more likely be tight
for cash than not. The lack of public accomodation would be made
up by the usual expedients: foreign coins, credit, unwanted merchandise,
and private issue tokens. Maybe tokens got started in the 18th century,
more likely in the 19th, by the end of the 19th century they were definitely
in use here and there, especially in the Azores, where there would be all
kinds of supply problems on an irregular basis. Maybe the high point
of token production was in the confusion of the early republican period.
A cute twist was the series of porcelain tokens made in the late 1910s-20s.
Portuguese tokens are generally scarce. Some are expensive.
I'm not sure if there is a catalog for them
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