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Comment by gtech1 | Hacker News Reader

One thing that always bothered me was his use of currency. In the French original he mentions at least 5-6 types of currency and it seems they all have common sub-divisions, despite some of them being Spanish or even Italian.

Was France using other people's currrncy back then ?

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The nation of France as we know it did not exist at that time and there was no standardized currency among the kingdoms that made up the crown. Livres, sous, and deniers were the standard unit of accounting but each major polity produced their own coinage. Kings also sometimes devalued their currencies to help pay for wars so traders preferred to use more stable currencies like Spanish and Dutch coins (Louis XIII did a major devaluation about a decade after the time period of the book, which colored perceptions of the time).

It was very common before nationalism and the standardization of currencies. I read primary sources about conquistadors and the contracts financing and supplying the expedition might involve a dozen currencies because each trader supplying the wood, food, animals, etc would work in their own preferred/local currency.

One niggle: France was mostly made up of duchies, not kingdoms. The King of France had allegiance from some of the duchies making up modern France, but notably Burgundy was the one who captured Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) and turned her over to the English - so clearly not all.

Not sure about the Occitan; IIRC Eleanor was considered a queen in her own right as rule of Aquitaine, not a duchess.

I'm no historian, but back then, coins were literally worth their weight in gold (or silver, copper, bronze, whatever), so it was probably easier to pay with foreign currency than we might assume...

> were literally worth their weight in gold (or silver, copper, bronze, whatever), so it was probably easier to pay with foreign currency than we might assume

Are you sure you know what the coin paid you is made of? A merchant of the time wasn’t. Those who care not to be scammed have never found it simple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debasement

In practice though, you only have to be as confident as the guy who will eventually sell you something for it.

Experienced traders can make a quick estimate of the purity by rubbing it against a touchstone, which has been used since ancient times. And by treating the rubbings with mineral acids you can make even more accurate determinations, although I'm not sure if this was done in the 1620s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone_(assaying_tool)

You are discussing absolute certainty, but in practice a box full of Spanish dubloons was very likely to be a treasure trove, and people generally trusted coinage, even if they had doubts. A filed silver penny still often bought a penny's worth of goods.

It’s more that there was a standard unit of accounting (livres, sous, and deniers) and everyone could convert from one currency to that standard and back to another currency. It moved a lot slower than modern foreign exchange so except for local fluctuations, it was rather predictable.

Everyone used whatever currency was locally availible, with every merchant in border regions being very aware of conversion rates. Throughout history there was also a cronic shortage of smaller-denomination cash, stuff for normal people to buy normal things. Today, we see "clipped" coins as evidence of forgery when in fact much of that was likely related to a lack of loose change. Nobody in town able to break a gold crown? Well, maybe you buy a horse with a slice of gold from that crown.

Clipping and dissecting a coin into smaller pieces for down-conversion are very different things. The piece of eight wasn't haphazardly cut, but instead pre-indented for breaking cleanly.

If you want to buy something worth 6% of a gold coin, whacking off an edge of one is a weird way to do it. You'd need a scale handy.

There had to be other mechanisms, nobody was clipping coins as part of any kind of honest commerce.

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