As anyone who knows anything about Britain
knows, the United Kingdom uses a currency known as the Great British Pound. Also, look at that empire they once used to
control. Impressive, right? Well, what about some of their former colonies? Do they use pounds? Well, Egypt does, but what about the others? Well, obviously America uses the US Dollar,
but look at this… the Canadian Dollar, the Australian Dollar, the Singaporean Dollar,
the Malaysian Ringgit (well, formerly Dollar)... and it’s all over the place, the Bahamas,
Jamaica, Guyana, Hong Kong?! What’s going on here? [Sponsored by NordVPN] Well, if we’re going to talk about the history
of currencies of the British Empire, we might as well talk about Britain itself. In Anglo-Saxon times, England started using
currencies inspired by Charlemagne’s empire, which used a currency called the “livre”,
from the Latin “libra”, which was translated into the English “pound”. Nowadays, in the UK of course, a pound is
a measurement of currency, whereas in the US it’s a measure of weight, but in these
times, the currency was called a pound because it was literally a pound of silver. Of course, much like the imperial system that
bore the pound weight, England’s currency system also didn’t make any sense. A pound was divided into 20 shillings, which
was further divided into 12 pence, and then a penny was finally divided into 4 farthings. Simple, right? I mean, to be fair the whole thing was Charlemagne’s
idea, so… Then blah-blah-blah, the pound sterling was
soon after also established, and then the Bank of England was also founded in 1694,
and a whole lot of other stuff happened currency-wise, until it was time for the empire stuff. In 1707, England and Scotland united, and
the pound Scot was merged with the pound sterling. Same thing happened when Ireland was brought
in in 1801, though the Irish pound still circulated until 1826. However, when Britain started to export its
ways of eating tea and dunking crumpers around the world, there wasn’t necessarily a single
currency all around the British Empire. This is because, back in these days, the pound
sterling was a kind of commodity money, meaning it had to be backed by silver or gold. Unfortunately, not everywhere around the world
had the same amount of these metals as back home, so many of Britain’s colonies established
their own currencies, even if they still accepted pound currencies. Okay, let’s go through this region-by-region. Britain’s first colonial holdings were on
the east coast of North America, specifically the colonies that would later form the United
States and Canada. In the early days, each of the colonies had
their own currencies, which were not equal to each-other, although they were still denoted
as pounds, shillings, and pence. Then, in 1775 as the 13 colonies were fighting
for their independence, the Continental Congress established the Continental currency… which
was kind of a complete disaster due to runaway inflation. Later, the Coinage Act of 1792 properly established
the United States Dollar, coming from the Low German term “Thaler”, from the city
of Joachimsthal, the Joachimsthaler, a little like how we call these “burgers” as their
recipe comes from Hamburg. This is also the origin of the name of the
Spanish dollar, more on all this later in the video. Canada, which had much the same history of
a confusing mess of different currencies by the early 19th century, would later face a
decision-- when trying to unify these currencies-- between using the pound sterling or using
a currency more linked to that used in nearby America. I’ll let you guess which one they picked. And when Canada broke off from Britain in
1867, they finally established their own national currency with its value determined as a kind
of compromise between the US Dollar and the British sovereign. Story of Canada, in a nutshell. Okay, so what about Britain’s next big colonies,
Australia and New Zealand? I mean, they drive on the left, call fries
chips, and don’t talk anything like Americans do, so why don’t they use their own versions
of pounds? Well, Australia’s first currency was indeed
the Australian pound, introduced in 1910. However, the big question came in 1966, when
the currency was to be finally decimalized, and not that weird abomination from 1,000
years prior that you saw about 3 minutes prior. This meant a big change for the currency,
and so Prime Minister Robert Menzies (yes, that is how it’s pronounced) suggested the
name “royal”, which won out over names like the austral, roo, kanga, emu, digger,
kwid, and several other weird suggestions that I swear I’m not making up. However, later PM Harold Holt found out that
this was not a popular choice amongst the public, and so basically said, “screw it,
we’re going with the dollar”. The Australian Dollar was initially fixed
to the Pound sterling, as Australia remained part of the sterling area for one more year
until being pegged to the US Dollar, and then becoming a free-roaming currency of its own. If you want to learn more about the Australian
dollar, BrainCraft made a really good video all about it. Go check it out (and tell Vanessa I said hi)! New Zealand followed a similar path around
this time, also suggesting alternative names to replace the New Zealand pound, like the
kiwi, fern, and zeal, but the name dollar won out anyway. Lastly, we move onto two more prominent former
British colonies, this time two in Asia that were somewhat small in physical size, but
still big in financial power. First, let’s go with Singapore. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
the colonies of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, Sabah, etc. used the aforementioned Spanish
dollar, but in 1826 it was decided that the Indian rupee would now be used in trade, but
this wasn’t deemed a suitable currency for trade in the region, and the Straits dollar
was introduced when these colonies broke off from British India. Singapore then used the Malayan dollar from
1939, and then the Malaya and British Borneo dollar from 1953. When Singapore joined Malaysia, their currencies
were joined in a currency union, until two years after Singapore was kicked out, when
Singapore just decided to go their own way. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but
so are all these stories. In Hong Kong however— despite being once
part of the British Empire and now technically kind of part of China— they use the Hong
Kong dollar, the world’s most interesting currency (I will fight you on this). Initially, when Hong Kong was taken over by
the British and established as a trading port, they didn’t really have a currency, and
just used whatever was used around them. However, after trying to influence Canada’s
currency situation previously, London decided that maybe enforcing the pound sterling everywhere
wasn’t the best idea, and so instead made a new, separate currency for Hong Kong, this
time also immediately going for the silver Spanish dollar system which had also been
popular here. Of course, there are numerous other dollar
currencies in use all around the world, regardless of whether or not they were a British colony,
and not always because of influence from the US. As previously mentioned, the term “dollar”
came from Joachimsthaler, as Joachimsthal was where the Kingdom of Bohemia got the silver
to mint all its coins. The word Thaler spread all around Europe,
twisting and turning until it reached the Netherlands, who established the leeuwendaalder
(lion dollar) for international trade. Then the lion dollar was gradually replaced
by the Spanish peso, which was often called the Spanish dólar, as they looked a lot like
the old lion dollar. The $ sign likely even comes from the word
peso, specifically as a sloppily drawn PS. Of course, the history of currencies and economics
can be just as long-winded and confusing as the histories of the nations and empires that
used them, so of course this is just a simple summary of how everything went down. If you want to read more, I have a crap-ton
of Wikipedia articles in the description for you to read more on, but I just wanted to
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