Pieces of eight

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Neil MacGregor's world history as told through things that time has left behind. This week he is exploring the world between 1450 and 1600 - looking at what was happening in South America, Africa and Japan at the time of the great European age of discovery. He has looked at the new ocean going galleons that were being built in Europe at this time and today he describes the money that was being used to fuel the great new trade routes of the period. He is with pieces of eight, little silver coins that by 1600 could have been used in many countries around the world. Neil describes Spain's dominance in South America and their discovery of a silver mountain in Potosi in present day Bolivia. He describes the process by which pieces of eight turned into the first truly global money. The Bolivian former head of a UNESCO project in Potosi describes the conditions for workers there today and the financial historian William Bernstein looks at how these rough silver coins were to shift the entire balance of world commerce. Producer: Anthony Denselow

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.0	Money, advertisement. Money advertisers assure us will let us buy our dreams, but some money and especially
0:19.9	coins are already the stuff of dreams, with names that ring to the magic of history and legend,
0:26.7	Duckets and Florence, groats, guineas, sovereigns.
0:30.8	But none of them can compare with the most famous coins of all time.
0:35.0	Familiar in books and films from Treasure Island to the Pirates of the Caribbean,
0:39.0	they carry with them a freight of associations.
0:42.0	Pirates, Captain Flint!
0:44.0	Pirates!
0:45.0	But it's not just thanks to Long John Silver's parrot
0:50.0	that pieces of eight are the supreme celebrities among world
0:54.0	currencies. For the peso de Ochoreales, the Spanish piece of eight, was the first
0:59.6	truly global money. It was produced in huge quantities and within 25 years of its
1:11.0	first minting in the 1570s, it had spread across Asia, Europe, Africa and
1:16.2	the Americas, establishing a global dominance that it was to maintain well into the 19th century.
1:21.8	Before the discovery of the vast deposits of silver in the new world
1:26.0	there really was very little silver and gold to use as a medium of exchange.
1:31.0	The silver was not allowed to the Indians.
1:36.0	A big part of the silver was sent to Spain,
1:40.0	and from Spain went to many parts of Europe.
1:45.0	A history of the world in a hundred objects. Pieces of eight.
1:53.0	silver coins minted in Bolivia between 1573 and 1598. 28.
	...

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