The Latin Monetary Union of 1866 - The Euro avant la lettre.
The Latin Monetary Union of 1866 - The Euro avant la lettre.
Due to a relatively long period of peace and an increase of international trade between European countries, the idea was vetted that it would be wise to create a stable monetary union between several European states in order to ease monetary transactions and end trade differences caused by currency exchange rates.
I am not speaking of the treaty of Maastricht where the Euro was created. I am speaking of a period after great turmoil in Europe that ended in 1815.
In 1865 the French, Belgium, Italian and Swiss government decided to create a new monetary union between their countries.
They decided to create gold and silver coins of equal weight, which ended the differences in the currency exchange rates between those countries.
This “Latin Monetary Union” started on the first of August 1866.
This monetary union was a kind of a “Euro avant la lettre”. Contrary to the present Euro, the participating counties kept their own currencies.
What they did was creating standards for their coins in silver and gold (Remember that in those years Europe still got the Gold standard).
The 4 founding nations decided to conform themselves to make gold and silver coins of the same weight.
Because the French were leading this project, standards were created based on the weight of the French gold coins of 100, 50, 20, en 10 Francs and the silver coins of 5, 2 en 1 Franc and 50 and 20 centimes.
This system worked remarkably well and became a great succes.
For example, if a Swiss merchant bought goods in France for 100 Frans, he could pay with 100 Swiss Francs, 100 Italian Lires, 100 Belgian Francs or 100 French Francs.
In total 18 countries joined this Union. A map with all member states is shown at the bottom of this post. Outside of Europe, countries like Peru, Venezuela and Colombia also adopted and joined this Union.
This Monetary Union was very successful and through that time it was the largest and most successful Monetary Union ever!
When the first World War started in 1914, the union basically ended, however the treaty was definitely terminated in 1927 after a period of more than 60 years.
From my own collection I show you the golden coins of the founding nations:
France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland.
Below a map of participating countries in Europe.
Enjoy!!
Great post and awesome collection.
I would love a collection like that.
Mistakes were made when the Gold standard was stopped.
Currencies should always be backed by gold or silver or something of eternal value.
By having this it stops governments manipulating currencies, inflating and enslaving is people.
It will all come to a messy end shortly I assure you.
Have a lovely day :)
Nice! I love history. Wasn't Greece kicked out of this one? I might be wrong, but I thought Greece had troubles with it in some way.
Yes, they left the union in 1908 due to the fact that they mashed their accounts, they were economically weak and were internationally not credible. So does history repeats itself? No offense to the Greek people of course.
No offense of course. Those are some nice coins too. I forgot to say. The best I can do is a few Sovereigns :)
Thanks!! Sovereigns are nice to. Great investment and to be bought with a small premium, although most of the time a little bit more than other vintage European gold coins.
History is amazing , it's fun to study and you can learn a lot. Great post!
Thanks. You are correct. Many lessons can be learned from history. That's why it is so strange that nowadays some people try to erase our magnificent history.
Vatican city was also a member but they got kicked out. But the 20 Lira with the pope on them are nice though.
What I know is that the began to debase their currency. Meaning that they minted coins with a lower percentage ofvsilver and gold and then exchanged them with coins from the other nations. But indeed, the coin looked nice. They are a collectors item I believe.