Chapter 106: Multiple Currencies and the State Bank of Russia
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ps: Today I went to the hospital with my family for a day. My head was about to explode due to the sun, and my eyes were sore. These two pages will help me prepare the ground.
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Peter also knew about the arrival of the cooks. In fact, this was his arrangement. He would first select the best cooks and then popularize them in the army.
One cook will lead more cooks to form a nutritional supply team, which will at least eliminate septicemia.
But besides the cook's affairs, Peter has already begun to work on equally more important things.
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Abolish the mint and establish a national bank!
Peter knew that at the end of the 17th century, there was another financial crisis in Tsarist Russia.
Since the time of Yelena Glinskaya, the weight of the silver kopeck has dropped from 0.64 to 0.39 grams, making it an insignificant coin.
In 1698, Peter the Great, who was busy preparing for a new war with Sweden, issued an order stipulating that the weight of the kopeck was 0.28 grams and the silver content was 0.25~0.26 grams.
In a letter to Alexander Danilovich Menshikov, Peter the Great contemptuously called these coins "lice."
At the same time, the coins necessary for small transactions completely disappeared. The kopecks were cut in half and sometimes into thirds, so that it took a lot of time and effort to calculate the amount of coins for large payments.
When Peter I stayed in London as a member of the embassy, he visited the mint in the Tower of London several times and carefully watched the working of the minting machines.
The head of the British Mint at the time was Isaac Newton. It was under his leadership that Britain achieved a comprehensive transition to mechanically minted coins.
In 1700, Peter I issued an order notifying residents to implement copper coins - "polushka" and "1/4 copper coins". From then on, coins were made mechanically on a mechanical press bed, instead of using copper coins as before.
Metal wire handmade.
In the plan summary, new coins and silver coins were circulated at the same time. It was planned to use 1 pood of copper to mint new coins of 12 rubles and 70 kopecks. This was to make the price of 2 porushka copper equal to the market price of 1 kopek silver.
The new mint established to mint new coins was called the Riverbank Mint, because the mint was located in the Kremlin Palace near the banks of the Moskva River, not far from the Borovits Gate.
A year later, in order to supplement the copper coins, Peter I issued a batch of new silver coins:
All these coins were minted at the mint set up in the village of Kadashev across the Moscow River. From this time on, the concept of coins began to only refer to coins cast by machines, and made by hand with metal wires.
The old coins began to be called "Xiao Jin Jia".
Both coins were minted at the newly built Kadashev Mint.
A variety of machines were installed in the new mint: rolling lathes for making sheet metal, cutting lathes for cutting circles, and printing lathes for casting. These lathes were driven by grinding wheels drawn by water or horses.
In the earliest machines, the master mold was fixed on a hammer dropped from a height, and then transitioned to the current screw press.
Before 1704, the share of new coins was relatively small, because residents were slow to adapt to the new coins, and the main coins were still silver kopecks made of wire.
In 1700, a new mint appeared in the building where the meeting of the gentry was originally located on Red Square. This mint also began to mint silver kopecks. Four years later, the silver ruble was issued. The issuance of this coin changed the Russian monetary system. Present a complete state.
The coining of wire coins continued until 1718, with the aim of allowing each Russian resident to choose coins at his own discretion, in which case the weight of 100 old silver kopecks was equal to the weight of 1 new ruble.
After the casting of wire coins stopped, large-denomination coins began to occupy a dominant position in the domestic monetary system. However, at this time, the fineness of silver, such as the fineness of silver in 1 ruble, dropped sharply and began to be significantly inferior to European thalers.
The price Russia paid for its endless and exhausting wars took its toll.
1718 could be the end year of Peter's monetary reform, and the silk kopeck was no longer minted.
In 1722, the Tsar issued a special order prohibiting the use of the Alten as a unit of monetary calculation, and the original Kinga began to be called "1/2 kopek".
By the end of the reign of Peter I, domestic coin production mainly used three metals.
Coins with a currency value of 2 rubles are minted in gold, 1 ruble, 1/2 ruble and 1 hrivennik are minted in silver, 5 kopecks, 1 kopeck, 1 kopeck and porushka are minted in copper.
This is also the situation Peter is facing now. Currencies of varying degrees, except those made of copper, all contain real gold and silver.
But since Peter the Great, the value of the currency has remained unchanged.
The European thaler has always been higher in silver content than the Russian currency.
During the reign of Peter I, Russia regained access to the Baltic Sea from Sweden, and the first silver smelting plant on the Ergun River in Transbaikal began to be put into production.
In addition, several copper smelters were founded in the Urals, one of which was founded by the later Russian historian and former artillery lieutenant Vasily Nikitich Tatishev on the commission of Peter I.
However, the problem of coin raw materials was quite acute, and the country had to concentrate all its efforts on dealing with many wars and reforming ancient business methods.
Peter I sought to source precious metals in the country by recruiting the Chamber of Commerce, an organization founded in the 17th century to purchase furs from Siberian residents.
In order to purchase gold and silver, a lot of money was allocated to the Chamber of Commerce from the state treasury. In 1711 alone, 50,000 rubles were allocated to the Chamber of Commerce.
Trade representatives from the Chamber of Commerce visited the bazaars of Russia to purchase gold and silver at prices set by the tsar.
When they appeared on the market, no one but them dared to buy the precious metal, but it was the taxes collected in the form of thalers from foreign merchants that provided more silver.
Under such circumstances, the state price of taler, during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, the father of Peter I, was 50 kopecks, but the market price was much higher.
Normally, most of the silver that provided the treasury should be the canceled silk kopecks, but the people were not in a hurry to say goodbye to this kind of kopecks, and preferred not to hand over the silver to the mint, but to use them to smelt sacred coins. For example, clothing or tableware may be kept in boxes or buried underground as a hoard, and no punitive measures will be effective.
Those who ultimately sent their coins to the mint received only 10% more than the original price.