Page 237 - Dutch Asiatic Shipping Volume 1

In the second half o f the eighteenth century the resolutions became more exact as to
the division; the payement too was subdivided according to the various types of coins and
the chambers were less often left any choice in their purchasing. Possibly the deviations
in dispatch by the chambers decreased as well; the checks made in Batavia on the shipments
over a number o f years after 1772 prove there t o b e only marginal differences between
2
shipments and resolutions. As an example a survey is included of shipments in the 1772-73
season (table 43).
Table 43: Currency shipped to Asia 1772-1773
According to res. Heren 17
Received in Asia according to
the account of 11.10.1774:
fi 1,095,744
902,430
547,366
349,983
901,247
41,506
57,170
103,166
3,998,612
of 30.9.1772:
gold bars
silver bars
whole ducatoons
half ducatoons
fi 1,100,000
900,000
550,000
350,000
Mexicanen 900,000
scheepjesschellingen 40,000
double stuivers
single stuivers
60,000
100,000
4,000,000
The amounts in table 46 are in guilders. In as far as in the early seventeenth century
the amounts are given in reals these have been converted into guilders on the basis of the
cash value mentioned in the resolutions - cf. the explanatory note to the table for these
years. The guilderwas initially only a unit of reckoning, not until 1680 were silver guilders
struck by the provincial mints in the Republic and in 1694 this coin was incorporated in
the Republic's coinage. The guilder represented in pure silver the values as given in table
44.
Table 44: Pure silver per guilder, in grams
3
1597-1603
1604-1606
1607-1610
1611-1619
1620-1659
1660-1681
1682-1844
11
10
10
10
10
9
9
The guilder was divided into 20 stuivers, the stuiver into 16penningen. The characteristics
of the coins exported by the V O C have been summed up in table 4 5 .
At first the silver and gold bars shipped by the VOC appear not to have been of a
standard alloy. From 1685 however the majority of silver bars are of a 986% fineness, or,
in the old terminology, 11 penningen 20 grain (pure silver = 12 penningen, the penning
2. A R A ;
V O C
13500, Copia
Verdeelde
eisen, 1773-1779.
3. Posthumus, Nederlandsche prijsgeschiedenis I, cxiii.
.17
.94
.89
.71
.28
.74
.61