The Maria Teresa Thaler - gurade

[Flavio]

Hi all ,
it's passed a lot of time from my last post, but I'm not here to show you a new sword (unfortunately ), but because, in these last days, my sweet girlfriend has given me a famous Thaler of Maria Teresa of Austria.
As you well know this kind of coin can be found in some Ethiopian Guradè instead of the normal pommel cup. So I have looked for some informations about this coin and I have found an interesting history beyond this coin. Here is a summary of this history. It's also interesting to know that there are some variations among this coins that can help the collector of Guradè to date his pieces.


When from the XIX century the Europeans started to travel on the coasts of the Red Sea, they were amazed to find the inhabitants of that places in possession of a big silver Austrian coin that freely circulated, while any other type of papery money or metal coins were refused from the native.

This particular coin was also used in Abyssinia when the Italians came there toward the second halves the XIX century.

The history of this coin is interesting and is worth to remember it.

The Thaler, of Austrian mintage, has its origins in the historical silver coins minted from European States that in the ‘600 and in the ‘700 dealt with the countries of overseas and particularly with those of East. In that epoch, in fact, had been born the Spanish “colonnata” , the Portuguese “pataca”, the Mexican “piastra”, that was the descendant of the most ancient Venetian “piastra”, coins that had the purpose to allow, through a single coin, whose value was insured from a suitable weight in silver, sure commercial exchanges with countries without a national mintage. Maria Teresa of Austria, in her multiform work to increase the economic and commercial growth of her own country, gave life to the “Thaler” that soon taken her name; this new coin, that was favored by the role of protector of the goods of the Catholics in the East that the empire of Asburgo assumed, taken soon root and firmly along all the countries that are leaned out on the Red Sea and on the Gulf of Aden.

The Thaler of Maria Teresa was coined in Austria in various cities, among which also Milan, Trieste and Venice, at that time under the Austrian dominion, and it circulated from almost one century as coin of exchange in the two coasts of the Red Sea as well as in the whole Abyssinia. When the ex missionary Giuseppe Sapeto purchased the bay of Assab, he paid with this coin. 6000 Thalers was the price of the purchase and the coins expressly required by the Sapeto in Italy with the prudence that the pearls of the pin of the queen were well in relief since in different case they would not have been approved from the native.

When, a few years later, the Italian Government gave birth to the Colony Eritrea, in consideration of the fact that the rooted presence of the Thaler couldn't be suddenly modified, abstained momentarily to change the monetary state, trying to parallelly adopt the Italian coin.

With this politics, in the first months of 1885, conquered Massaua, Italy ordered 500.000 Thalers of Maria Teresa to Austria, and in 1887, to the time of the first war of Africa, the Italians asked the permit of mintage this coin, receiving a refusal from Austria. Other denials it had in 1918 and in 1922.

The flow of Thalers from Austria toward the Horn of Africa was very sustained during almost two centuries. It was calculated that until 1935 circulated in only Ethiopia over 43 million pieces.

On the other hand the commercial exchanges in that countries, at the end of the XIX century, happened for the large majority for exchange of commodity against commodity and also the same Thaler was considered by the local populations more as a commodity of exchange that as a coin, for the intrinsic value of the silver in it content.

Italy, increasing its influence in the African territory, tried a lot of times to discipline the circulation of the coin trying to reconcile the demands of the local life with those of the national prestige: in fact, it could not allow the adoption of a foreign coin in its own territory.

All the attempts effected before 1925, to replace the Thaler of Maria Teresa in the Horn of Africa, failed. The first Eritrean Thaler (of the nominal value of 5 liras) was coined in 1891; the second in 1918.

It would be too much long to enumerate and to describe the vicissitudes of these experiments. It will be enough to remember that the creation of special uniforms as the Italian Thaler, the Italian rupee, the Thaler eritreos, succeeded never in replacing that of Maria Teresa. Even the eritrean Thaler of the 1918 was coined to imitation of that Austrian: the bust of Maria Teresa was replaced by an ideal female representation of Italy, while in the back, the Sabaudian shield, standing on an eagle, tried to imitate the Asburgic shield that leaned on a two-headed eagle.

The 9 July of 1935, to the eve of the campaign of Africa, Italy finally succeeded in concluding with Austria an accord, through which it assured him for 25 years the exclusive right of mintage of the Thaler of Maria Teresa, and the mint in Rome provided to send in Oriental Africa eighteen million of pieces.

January 5 th 1938 a Ministerial Decree officially suspended the change of the Thalers against liras, setting the big Austrian coin to the state of simple commodity of exchange and the price dictated by the quotation of the silver.

But the history doesn't end here. In fact England, interpreting to its way the italo-Austrian accord of July 9 th 1935, leaning its reasonings on the fact that Austria had abdicated the right of mintage of the prestigious coin, it began to coin the Thaler of Maria Teresa sending enormous quantities of it in oriental Africa, that served for its political-military goals. Only in 1961, on Austrian pressures, England stopped the mintage of it.

It is therefore comprehensible as, still today, Thalers of Maria Teresa circulates in Eritrea and in Ethiopia: the curious thing is that such coin is not treated for the suitable numismatic value in Europe, but it still maintains only the quotation of the actual silver.

After the death of Maria Teresa (1780) the date on the Thaler remained always the same (exactly 1780).
To recognize the coins minted by the Italian after the 1935 these are the most greater indications: legenda very close to the edge, the oval form of the pin of the queen (instead of circular), pearls around the pin in number of nine or ten, a less thick plumage of the eagle. The diameter of the coins minted after 1870 is of 40mm instead of 42mm and the silver title is 835 instead of 833. You can see this differences on the pictures attached (the one on a black background is mine and it’s an example minted after 1935) and the other it’s an example, I think, of a coin minted around the half of the XIX century. The other picture comes from Spring's book and it's a thaler on a Guradè.

Hope my english is quite understandable

[kahnjar1]

Hi Flavio,
Further to your interesting post re the Thaler, here is a little more history.
The Thaler is named after Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who died in 1780, which is the dated stamped on most Thaler specimens found today. The letter S and F which appear on the standard 1780 coin stand for Scholbe and Fabi, the Mintmaster and Warden at Gunsburg, where the Thalers were minted in the 1760s.
The coin was first minted in Vienna in 1751, at the time of a growing demand for a large silver coin for commercial and trading purposes. The Thaler was ideal as it was difficult to counterfeit, and could not be "clipped" as the edge was knurled in a specific way.
Its standards of weight and fineness were strictly maintained. The usual weight of the coin was 1 ounce Troy, and the silver content 75%. Hence a trade value could easily be established based on the price of silver at any given time.
As silver had long formed the general standard in trade with the Far East and particularly India and China, the Thaler was in great demand. By the first half of the 19th century, it was circulating in a wide area from the northwestern coast of Africa, Nigeria, Madagascar, and Muscat to the Black Sea.
The popularity of the coin is shown by the fact that over 45 million were struck during the first 12 years of the 20th century; 6 million were struck by the Royal Mint in England between 1945 and 1958.
In 1935 Austria was required under pressure from Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, to hand over the dies for the Thaler, as supplies were required for use in the Italian conquest of Abyssinia. Thereafter Italy claimed a monoply for manufacture of the coin, but as British interests required Thalers for trading in certain British administered territories, including the Arabian Peninsula, the Royal Mint prepared its own dies to strike the coin. During WW2 however, in order to save shipping costs, the working tools were sent to India, and the coins minted in Bombay.
Today it is still possible to buy Thalers, even from your local coin dealer. They are used extensively in necklaces particularly in The Oman. They were also, together with other silver coins, a source of silver for weapon decoration, and jewellery.
If the reader wishes to further investigate this coin, a search of GOOGLE will produce numerous results.
Regards Stuart