The \u2018Spanish\u2019 or \u2018Spanish American\u2019 peso or \u2018Piece of Eight\u2019 was the first global currency. Its impact was long lasting and far reaching. Successively known in Spanish first as \u201creal\u201d or \u201cpeso fuerte\u201d; in English as piece of eight, cob or pillar; in French as piastre; and after 1730 in Spanish as peso columnario or moneda columnaria and milled dollar in English, this specie was also well known in Asia. These coins changed people\u2019s consumption habits around the world by providing access to a wealth of imported goods. Pieces of Eight bought luxury items including spices, silk and cotton textiles, porcelain and tea, all of which became staple commodities as global commerce expanded. Until the late 18th century the silver dollars or pesos were minted in three cities only: Mexico, Lima and Potos\u00ed. The process involved cutting the silver with pliers into discs or planchets of a specified weight and purity, set at a weight of 423.9 grains, or 27.47 grams inclusive of alloy, and 930.7 thousandths of fin silver quality. The coins were decorated with symbols of the Hispanic and Indian sovereigns. The legend Hispaniarum et Indiarum Rex evoked the plus ultra reach of the Hispanic Monarchy and distinguished the cob from coins minted in peninsular Spain that made no reference to the Indies. Mexico alone cut 761 million of these coins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The \u2018Spanish\u2019 or \u2018Spanish American\u2019 peso or \u2018Piece of Eight\u2019 was the first global currency. Its impact was long lasting and far reaching. Successively known in Spanish first as \u201creal\u201d or \u201cpeso fuerte\u201d; in English as piece of eight, cob or pillar; in French as piastre; and after 1730 in Spanish as peso columnario or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificialia","tag-piece-of-eight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2062"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3988,"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions\/3988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flacso.edu.ec\/laglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}