The Spanish gold onza (or 8- escudo coin) was of identical weight to the Spanish dollar but was officially valued at 16 silver pesos, thus putting the peso on a bimetallic standard, worth either the silver Mexican peso (27.07 g 0.903 fine, or 0.786 troy ounce XAG) or 1/16th the gold onza (1.6915 g 0.875 fine, or 0.0476 troy ounce XAU), with a gold/silver ratio of 16. Silver 50-centimo coin issued from 1864 until the 1890s 19th century Gold/Silver Bimetallic standard An 1857 decree requiring the keeping of accounts in pesos and centimos (worth 1/100th of a peso) was of little help to the situation given the existence of copper cuartos worth 160 to a peso. Money has nearly always been scarce in Manila, and when it was abundant it was shipped to the provinces or exported abroad to pay for exports. Money came in different coinages, and fractional currency in addition to the real and the cuarto also existed.

The absence of officially minted cuartos in the 19th century was alleviated in part by counterfeit two-cuarto coins made by Igorot copper miners in the Cordilleras.Ī currency system derived from coins imported from Spain, China and neighboring countries was fraught with various difficulties. Locally produced crude copper or bronze coins called cuartos or barrillas (hence the Tagalog/Filipino words cuarta or kwarta, 'money' and barya 'coin' or 'loose change') were also struck in the Philippines by order of the Spanish government, with 20 cuartos being equal to one real (hence, 160 cuartos to a peso). įractional currency was supplied by cutting the Spanish dollar coin, most commonly into eight wedges each worth one Spanish real. These crudely-made coins were subsequently replaced by machine-minted coins called Columnarios (pillar dollars) or “dos mundos (two worlds)” in 1732 containing 27.07 grams of 0.917 fine silver (revised to 0.903 fine in 1771). These coins usually bore a cross on one side and the Spanish royal coat-of-arms on the other. The earliest silver coins brought in by the Manila galleons from Mexico and other Spanish American colonies were in the form of roughly-cut cobs or macuquinas. Additionally, Spanish gold onzas or eight- escudo coins were also introduced with identical weight to the Spanish dollar but valued at 16 silver pesos. The local salapi continued under Spanish rule as a toston or half-peso coin. The Spanish dollar or silver peso worth eight reales was first introduced by the Magellan expedition of 1521 and brought in large quantities after the 1565 conquest of the Philippines by Miguel López de Legazpi. Spanish gold onza or 8 escudos coin imported from Spanish America and valued at 16 silver pesos Alternately, it could be from 10 and 5 centimo coins of the Spanish peseta, known as the perra gorda and perra chica. Pera is thought to be from Malay perak (silver), which also has a direct cognate or adaptation in Tagalog/Filipino as pilak.

Alternately, it could be from Arabic asrafi (a gold coin, see Persian ashrafi) or sarf (money, money exchange). Salapi is thought to be from isa (one) + rupya which would become lapia when adapted to Tagalog. Two native Tagalog words for money which survive today in Filipino were salapi and possibly pera.

The original silver currency unit was the rupya or rupiah, brought over by trade with India and Indonesia. Gold, which was plentiful in many parts of the islands, invariably found its way into these objects that included the Piloncitos, small bead-like gold bits considered by the local numismatists as the earliest coin of the ancient peoples of the Philippines, and gold barter rings. The inconvenience of barter, however, later led to the use of some objects as a medium of exchange. The trade the pre-colonial tribes of what is now the Philippines did among themselves with its many types of pre-Hispanic kingdoms ( kedatuans, rajahnates, wangdoms, lakanates and sultanates) and with traders from the neighboring islands was conducted through barter. Piloncitos, a type of coin used by the pre-colonial peoples of the archipelago

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