A Silver Coin with No Place at Home
There was once a silver coin disliked in its homeland for its low fineness. Yet, precisely because it had no place to belong, it embarked on a journey, from the Eastern Mediterranean to North America, making its mark upon the world. This is the long journey of the silver coin that bore the lion.
A Coin Without a King
There is a silver coin. On its obverse, a knight holds a shield bearing a lion; on its reverse, a lion rampant. Yet, nowhere is there a portrait of a king. Not even the king's name is inscribed. Instead, what is engraved is a biblical verse: he who trusts in the Lord is not moved.
In 1575, the province of Holland, then in the midst of a revolt, began to strike this Leeuwendaalder, or Lion Daalder. It was a silver coin that stood not on the face of a king, but on a holy verse and a lion. The province would declare the king's deposition in 1581. On its coinage, this country stood without a king six years earlier.
The Disliked Silver Coin
However, this lion silver coin was not of noble birth. Its weight was approximately 27.7 grams, and its fineness was about three-quarters. This was clearly lower than the fineness of the Rijksdaalder circulating in the same Low Countries, which was 885 parts per thousand. This was a silver coin meant to finance the war.
As expected, it was disliked domestically. If one could choose a good silver coin, one would not want to keep a bad, low-fineness coin. This coin, avoided for domestic payments, was therefore used for payments abroad.
Bad Money Travels
Bad money, having no place at home, travels the world. From the ports of the Low Countries, ship after ship laden with lion silver coins set sail.
In the 17th-century Eastern Mediterranean, this silver coin became a standard for settlement in the Levant trade with the Ottoman Empire. The silver coins carried by ships from the Low Countries to eastern ports took root as local currency. In the Ottoman Empire, it was called the Asadi guruş. Meanwhile, in the Arabic-speaking world, it was called Abu Kalb, meaning "father of the dog," because the lion on the coin looked like a dog.
The lion's name even became that of national currencies. The Romanian and Moldovan Leu, and the Bulgarian Lev. Both live on today as currencies that owe their names to the lion on this silver coin.
The Lion That Carried a Name
The lion silver coin also crossed to the west. It circulated across the Atlantic, in the colony of New Amsterdam founded by people from the Low Countries, an area that would later become New York.
In English, it was called the Lion Dollar. The word "daalder" transformed into "dollar" in English speech. However, one must not tell a simple, linear story of this coin being the ancestor of the dollar. The standard silver coin in North America was, after all, the Spanish 8 reales.
The path of a name and the role of a standard coin are two different things. The lion carried the name, while the 8 reales became the yardstick.
More in Reading a coin
The Fate of Gold, Divided by Its Use
The Toyotomi faction converted the gold and silver left by Hideyoshi into military power, while Tokugawa Ieyasu established a monetary system valid throughout the country. This is the story of how gold and silver from the same era met completely opposite ends depending on how they were used.
The Value of the Yen as Defined by the 20 Yen Gold Coin
The old 20 yen gold coin was the highest denomination established by the New Coinage Act. The value of this coin, which equated one yen to 1.5 grams of pure gold, was halved in the 30th year of Meiji. Behind this was the war indemnity left in London.
The Fate of Paper Inscribed with "Time Flies"
In the center, "FUGIO" (time flies) and a sundial; below it, "MIND YOUR BUSINESS." Printed to finance the War of Independence, the Continental currency, contrary to its motto, lost its value and left an idiom in the English language.
If you would like to read on
Everything in these pieces comes from the material itself.