The Japanese Sweden precursor and the first tickets

The bank of Stockholm

On the other hand, Sweden had rich copper mines, and often hand threw of this natural resource to equip itself with currencies reserved to internal circulation. Between 1644 and 1776, the mints of Avesta, Arboga, Ljusmedal, Semian, Estocoimo and other minors coined or, better, they forged heavy bronze and copper pieces, to which monetary value was attributed, and that was called plátmynt, literally monedachapa. Sometimes. they used tube pieces, like for first plátmynt, that were fused during the reign of Cristina. The form was generally square: in the four angles they appeared the real standards, and in center the corresponding value in silver currency consisted, call syif-mint. With time, the copper lost value with respect to the silver sensibly, but the mints continued respecting the relación'peso-value between two metals, reason why plátmynt corresponding to 10 to daler of the silver, today rarest, weighed 19 kilos and 700 grams; the piece of 8 to daler it weighed 14 kilos and means, and it was descended until the average one to daler, that the kilogram cleared. The problems are evident that, could create monetary use of these heavy metal bars: thus, for example, to transport them special bags made, of leather, that went sewn to the chairs of the horses, and it was necessary to provide itself with cars with wood drawers to contain the currencies. Meanwhile, in 1656, the financier Johan Paimstruch obtained permission of king Carlos X Gustavo to open in Estocoimo a change bank and loan. In 1660, the Stockhoims Bank was already in difficulties, due partly to the shortage of the deposits, and partly because of inflation that, to that rate, had taken plátmynt of 10 to daler to surpass the 20 kilos. For these reasons, and also to allow one more agile financing of the real boxes pressed by the debts, Palmstruch asked for permission to the government to emit banknotes in monopoly regime, permission that was granted to him. The first itself ticket left the Bank of Stockholm the 16 of 1661 July. With these emissions, the Swedish government could do in front, simultaneously, to the lack of currencies and the consequences, in the weight, of diminution of the value of copper. It is obvious, in effect, that to coin new to daler according to the inflation he would have been expensive, in addition to very difficult, the bank of Paimstruch allowed a breathing to the public finances emitting these credityf to sediar, that is credit notes that they would replace by metallic currencies as soon as outside possible. The units that have arrived to us are of 10 to daler and in almost all the year consists of emission: 1666. The form is rectangular, of white color, with a preprinted frame qué' locks up epígrafe where they are indicated characteristics of the title and their value. The serial number, that is above, and the companies were written by hand, eight altogether, that they guaranteed the emission. The first company/signature arrives at the left corresponds to Johan Paimstruch. But as of 1663 the price of copper began to increase, and the creditors most frequently asked for every time the change of tickets by metallic currency, until the point of which in few years they lead to the bank to the liquidation and its closing. Passed years more (1668), the government founded the one that today is the Sveriges Riksbank, a public bank of deposit that resumed the ticket emission in first half of the following century. We have already talked about banking receipts, promises of payment, accepted letters of credit like money, and paper money of necessity and obsidional (currency coined in a surrounded seat). What differentiates these emissions from first Swedish tickets? First of all, these were not emitted with endorsement of a deposit, and on the other hand was legal currency, that is that represented by law the amount of currency indicated in them. tickets were printed, and its nominal value was expressed in round numbers. They were impersonal, and it allowed that they were transferred without necessity of endorsements; that is that was titles to the carrier. All these characteristics turn them the first case in history of means of payment with the characteristics of modern banknotes. This first example was emulated by the Norwegian Jorgen Thor Mohien. In 1695 east industralist it created a true commercial empire based on raw materials, that mattered worldwide, and in fact controlled almost all the interchanges of the countries that are shown to the Baltic Sea, in the matter of cords, oil, soap and powder. Its great economic power allowed Mohien to obtain from the Norwegian government the position of economic adviser. But not even its activities sustral. eron to the turbulences of the period by which it was crossing Europe, and many boats of their fleet were victims of continuous wars that afflicted the European seas. This alarmed to great part of its creditors, who began to demand the restitution of its loans. Hard in its political position, Mohien obtained then from the government the authorization to emit paper money until return a port of which it reduced of his fleet. These tickets would have to replace the current currency temporarily, but they did not gain the confidence of the creditors who, as soon as they had received them, presented/displayed them to the change in metalist. Mohlen, left by all, declared bankruptcy and it died insolvente.

Meanwhile in Japan…

If Sweden emitted the first banknote of modern type, Chinese it was the first country that used the paper like monetary means, Could to back remain the Empire of the rising Sun? The first Japanese emissions 5gun involuntarily caused the government of sh (, that it favored the isolation of the country, avoiding all contact with the outer world. A little history allows to include/understand better east extreme isolation, that lasted several centuries. The emperor of Japan, the mikado one, reunited in his person from immemorial time the functions of head of the religion shinto and great feudatario of the independent provinces of the Empire. Already in the past, just like today, the effective functions of government exerted them others, mainly members of the noble families. Thus, in century Xi it dominated the Fujiwara family, solely thanks to his traditional one position like provider of the spouses of the emperors. After a civil war, fomented by these turbulent families of military extraction and by their intriguing administrators, the winners they received from the emperor the title of shógun, that means head of the military power. Shógun played during centuries a role determinant in history and, mainly, the Japanese culture. They dominated the country until the 1868 revolution, and forged with the force of the military traditions and with a more and more isolated emperor, but also more and more divinizado, the characteristics that nowadays they continue distinguishing the Japanese. Before the 1868 revolution, the State was based on a constitution that had been formed in the course of three centuries of domination of the Tokugawa family. According to these laws, the Empire of Japan was divided in diverse independent feudos to the front of which they found daimyó, feudatarios that exerted the power of practically absolute way. Who maintained daimyó militarily they were famous samurai, that transmitted the office of soldier of father to son. Subjecting to a label rigurosísima, the emperor was itself forced to live in isolation inside the city santa of Heian, that, after the revolution, he took the name from Kyoto. Luckyly for him, the custom had been abolished to change the host city continuously of the cut, being based on the principle of which to the death of mikado the city she became impure. Shógun, on the contrary, maintained contact with all and exerted with fullness their effective power of government. To the population, predominantly farmer, corresponded the task to guarantee the opulencia of the dominant classes. She is evident that one was a rather skillful organization who could to stay only by means of a rigorous and total isolation, which began shortly after the initial contacts with the western world. First in establishing relations with the Empire of the rising Sun they were the Portuguese retailers in century XVI. With them one began also one first attempt to introduce the Christian religion, in charge of the Jesuits headed by san Francisco Javier. The length isolation process began few decades violently later; all the conversos to the Christianity and the western residents they were annihilated. It was only allowed the Dutch to settle down in the small island of Deshima, in the gulf of Nakasaki.

The Yamada-Agaki

Indeed for those years, almost simultaneously that in Sweden, Japan had to resort to paper money emissions. The isolation, in place to increase the production, to stimulate the internal consumption and to promote, therefore, the economic development, caused a defiacionista process. As often it happens in these cases, the strong fall of the consumption and the necessities reduced the use of currencies of high value, in special of gold and silver, and it increased the necessities of current currency, the frugales Japanese farmers tried to put remedy to this problem fragmenting the currencies of silver, cho-gin, with the purpose of creating small pieces and using them like currency of little value. Around 1620, government shógun prohibited the partition of the currencies, and a retailer of Yamada began to replace the pieces of cho-gin by some receipts of ingots of gold or silver. One was small weave beams, longer than wide, in which they are imprimían diverse timbres and seals and that remembered tapes vaguely. They denominated yamada-agaki and they represented the first type of Japanese paper money, that it would maintain the tape form, or at least the vertical format, in the first official emissions of 1867. After the positive experience of yamada-agaki, accepted well as much by the town as by the noble, many daimyó began a to emit for his own territories tickets diversely illustrated and with timbres and customized seals of guarantee, They followed emissions, always private, of cities, temples and retailers. During long time types of extremely varied tickets were used that, of it forms inevitable, lead to a chaotic situation. Paper money of the State was not implanted until 1867, and this delay is explained by the extreme slowness of the monolithic imperial bureaucracy, excessively bound to a rigid label and the respect of the tradition, which made refractory accept the new features, It would contribute a definitively to break the isolation of Japan a period of scarcity and bad harvests of rice that would cause another monetary chaos, due to an nth deficiency of circulating and, in individual, current currency.

England::The birth of the bank of England

In the England of century XVII, the main functions large stone benches, that is the deposit, the loan and the change, made the goldsmiths, goldsmlhs, that carried out the same activities that lombards or bankers of Italian origin. And others were displaced a the Jews, to those who Eduardo I undressed of his goods and expelled in mass in 1290. Goidsmiths was mainly dedicated to acquire and to sell foreign currencies, to the commerce of precious metals and the valuation of the currencies. Next to these predominant activities, they developed others, like the acceptance of currencies that the retailers of ftaban in their strong boxes, in certain way as we do today when we trusted nues more tros appraised goods to the boxes of seguñdad of the banks. Deposits of this type were also made in the banks managed by lombards and in the Tower of London, where the real mint had its seat, in order to take refuge in the guarantee of the sovereign. But the kings, since we have already explained, they had continuous necessity to confront enormous expenses, and it was not easy to restrain the abuses, even in a country like England, where the Parliament traditionally tried to put boundary to the authoritarian decisions of the sovereign. One of these occasions occurred in 1640, when Expensive I was not able the approval of new taxes to finance the war that was getting rid with Scotland. By all answer, the sovereign seized to the force of 140,000 pounds sterling deposited in the Tower of London by retailers of the city. The people trusted then their deposits to the safest strong boxes of the goldsmiths of the capital, that thus they began to perform the function of tellers of his client from whom they received income and to that reinte records amounts. When depositor had necessity to have the money, the goldsmiths sent tickets to them with promise d payment, calls goldsmith notices, that they were cam biados freely, since all conside raban money itself. Along with these written promises, also circulated the orders of payment emitted by deposi tantes, similar to the present heels guaranteed by the deposits. With 1a promise of payment, transferable to other people, the banker was committed to pay certain sum that it could rescue with the simple presentation of the ticket in any bank. One treats, then, of a true banknote, that circulates according to the criteria that still today regulate the emission and the use of this type of currency: the value indicated in the title is guaranteed in fact by a banking institution, and the ticket can at any time be changed in effective currency. The promises of payment of the goldsmiths were characterized by the formula that follows present in British tickets: as it already happened to the change letters, also in these old orders of payment the banker formulated with clarity the commitment to pay indicated sum a who presented/displayed the title in a banking window I promise to pay the to bearer…. With time, and registering an activity more and more extended of goldsmiths, the government also finished being his client, and in fact he trusted the management to them of the national debt. In addition, he asked for himself to goldsmiths that they anticipated, against the payment of an interest, the sums coming from the collection he would pay.

The greater bank of the world

In 1667, the news that Dutch enemy boats had overcome the Thames and arranged to bomb London, extended the panic and it triggered a race to retire the deposits. Five years later, another one more of the many nigh raids of Corona, caused one very serious crisis of goidsmiths. In order to continue the war against Holland, king Carlos II needed a million and average one of pounds sterling, one adds enormous in those times. By suggestion of his advisers, the sovereign suspended by a year all the payments to goldsmiths. He happened, in other words, which for a long time many has been considering that it can happen today, that is consolidation or freezing of the national debt, which now as then it would be a true catastrophe. That caused another race to retire deposits, that the goldsmiths could not take care of quickly. The measurement had remarkable legal consequences, but the effects were disastrous mainly for the small economizers: although goldsmiths resorted to the Camera of the Lores, that recognized his to them rights, during a time only paid the interests of the pending debts, and soon, at the beginning of century XVIII, not even that. The collapse of the confidence of the public in the solution of the State increased the difficulties of the State Treasury, since now it were almost impossible to obtain loans. In this situation, the project received the present time to create a public bank, presented/displayed in 1688 by the horseman Scot William Paterson, and sponsored by Lord Montague, stop civil employee of the real Treasury, and that after prolonged debates was rejected, the occasion that gave origin to the foundation of the Bank of England was the customary urgent necessity of the real boxes of one enormous amount of money. 1694, the war against Luis XIV had entered a critical phase: the English government needed a loan a long term of 1.200.000 pounds sterling. Who were arranged to subscribe it met in a society by actions, The Governor and Company of the Bank of England, and was convinced after a series of advantages guaranteed by the law of 25 of April of 1694, called Tunnage Act, that is law of the tonnage. The payment of the interests made sure to them by means of some new taxes that burdened the tonnage of the boats, the beer and the licores, which devengaría the sum of 96,000 pounds sterling, that is 8% of the subscribed loan. The law also granted new born society the possibility of guarding deposits, of admitting income and of carrying out payments on behalf of depositors, to discount change letters and to grant loans guaranteed by merchandize. In addition, since to develop these activities the deposits and the 96,000 pounds of interests entered annually by the State Treasury were insufficient, the law authorized to society to emit tickets with the fixed value of 20 pounds, by an equal amount to its capital, that is 600,000 tickets altogether. On the contrary that the tickets of goidsmiths, these lacked metallic cover, because they were only guaranteed by the credit of the State. One treats, then, of the first great emission of completely fiduciary paper money of European history. The first tickets devengaban interests, and in addition it consisted in them the name of the beneficiary and the date of victory. In all it appeared the formula already presents/displays in tickets of the goldsmiths: I promise to pay the to bearer…, that also stayed in first tickets themselves of the Bank of England emitted at the beginning of century XVIII, when no longer they could change and they became graces period to the carrier, that is with the simple presentation of the title and with no need to identify the possessor. The Bank of England was an institution that represented the interests of London the turera and mercantile bourgeoisie, nces in the heat of development, that is raponían to those of many profeet of earth, the financiers and the pios goldsmith-bankers, who operated in competition with the new bank. In the beginning, they tried to oppose to the Bank of England another institution of credit that would have had to render to the State a sum much more elevated and with a smaller interest, but the attempt was not successful. Next they tried to cause the crisis of the bank reuniting tickets by an amount of 30,000 pounds and presenting/displaying them in the windows to change them by metallic currency. The Bank of England refused to carry out the conversion and managed to surpass the difficulties, although this decision determined the depreciation of tickets in a 17%. The bank continued the activity between bumps, like, for example, the general collapse of the credit and the suspension of payments, which had a problems with the American colonies. But it ended up mainly consolidating by the continuous necessity of loans of the public boxes. In 1709 were decided to duplicate the capital, that it subscribed in few hours, among other reasons because the State promulgated a series of norms that they guaranteed in fact to the Bank of England the monopoly of the ticket emission in the city of London. From 1745 values were emitted of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 300, 500 and 1,000 pounds sterling, whose outer aspect remained almost incambiado until 1956. Narrowing more and more the relations with the government, and thanks also to the industrial revolution, that the nation did of the Great Britain richer and powerful of the western world, the Bank of England became the greater banking institution of the British Empire and more important bank of issue of the world. Its solidity became proverbial: still today safe is said to ace ace the Bank of England, that is so surely like the Bank of England ".