The Vietnamese cash (chữ Hán: ; chữ Nôm: ; ), also called the sapek or sapèque, is a cast round coin with a square hole that was an official currency of Vietnam from the Đinh dynasty in 970 until the Nguyễn dynasty in 1945, and remained in circulation in North Vietnam until 1948. The same type of currency circulated in China, Japan, Korea, and Ryūkyū for centuries. Though the majority of Vietnamese cash coins throughout history were copper coins, lead, iron (from 1528) and zinc (from 1740) coins also circulated alongside them often at fluctuating rates (with 1 copper cash being worth 10 zinc cash in 1882). Coins made from metals of lower intrinsic value were introduced because of various superstitions involving Vietnamese people burying cash coins, as the problem of people burying cash coins became too much for the government. Almost all coins issued by government mints tended to be buried mere months after they had entered circulation. The Vietnamese government began issuing coins made from an alloy of zinc, lead, and tin. As these cash coins tended to be very fragile, they would decompose faster if buried, which caused the Vietnamese people to stop burying their coins.Manuel de Rivas, Idea del Imperio de Anam, Ó de Los Reinos Unidos de Tunquin y Cochinchina. Published: 1858 Manila, Spanish East Indies, page 115. (in Castilian)
The inscriptions of Vietnamese cash coins can be written in either the Viết chéo (曰湥 / 曰袑, top-bottom-right-left) style or the Viết thuận (曰順, clockwise, top-right-bottom-left) style.Đường Cao Tổ tuy lấy niên hiệu là Vũ Đức nhưng tiền đúc lại dùng chữ Khai Nguyên. Dẫn theo "Tiền thời Cảnh Hưng, một bí ẩn lịch sử cần được khám phá" của Nguyễn Cảnh Huy; tài liệu của Sở Khoa học công nghệ Bình Định cũng khẳng định tương tự: Khai Nguyên Thông Bảo do Đường Cao Tổ đúc
Etymology
The French term for cash coins, , comes from the Malay terms or meaning 'one pe(k)' (, or pie, being a kind of currency), which in turn come from the Chinese word / (, Vietnamese reading: ) meaning 'one-hundred'. The origin of the term might have come from the fact that cash coins were typically strung together in strings of around a hundred pieces.
The French adopted the term in Macau and initially used it to refer to Chinese cash coins but later also applied the term for Vietnamese cash coins.
Slang names
In the late 19th century slang spoken by the lower-class people of Saigon the term was used to refer to cash coins; this term was an abbreviation of ().File:L'Argot Annamite - M. A. Chéon (Année 1905, Volume 5, Numéro 1). - Pages 47 and 48 (in French).
Currency units
Traditionally, the basic units of Vietnamese currency were quan (, ), tiền, and đồng. One was 10 , and one was between 50 and 100 , depending on the time period. From the reign of Emperor Trần Thái Tông onward, 1 was 69 in ordinary commercial transactions but 1 was 70 for official transactions. From the reign of Emperor Lê Lợi, 1 was decreed to be 50 . During the Northern and Southern dynasties of Vietnam period, beginning in 1528, coins were reduced from to in diameter and diluted with zinc and iron. The smaller coinage was called or , in contrast to the larger (literally, 'valuable cash') or . One was equivalent to 600 , while 1 was only 360 . During the Later Lê dynasty, 1 was 60 ; therefore, 600 was 1 . During the Yuan dynasty, Vietnamese traders at the border with China used the rate 1 to 67 . Zinc coins began to appear in Dai Viet during the 18th century. One copper () coin was worth 3 zinc () coins. Beginning with the reign of Emperor Gia Long, both copper and zinc coins were in use. Originally the two coins had equal value, but eventually a copper coin rose to double the worth of a zinc coin, then triple, then sixfold, until the reign of Emperor Thành Thái, it was worth ten times a zinc coin.
History
Đinh and Early Lê dynasties
During the Bắc thuộc a number of Chinese currencies circulated in Vietnam, during this period precious metals like gold and silver were also used in commercial transactions but it wasn't until Vietnamese independence that the first natively produced cash coins would appear. The cash coins produced in Vietnam typically carried the era name of the period it was produced in.
The first Vietnamese coins were cast under the rule of the Đinh dynasty (968–981) with the introduction of the Thái Bình Hưng Bảo () under Đinh Bộ Lĩnh. Likewise the only inscription cast during the Early Lê dynasty period bore the inscription Thiên Phúc Trấn Bảo (天福鎮寶).Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư (Bản kỷ) - Quyển I (16b). However, for the next two centuries coins would remain a rarity in the daily lives of the common people, as bartering would remain the dominant means of exchange under both the Đinh and Early Lê dynasties.Alotrip.com – We book, you travel. Ancient Vietnamese coins – Episode 1. Published: Thursday, 12 Mar 2015 . Last updated: Thursday, 25 Jun 2015 09:01 Retrieved: 29 June 2017.
Lý dynasty
The first cash coins of the Lý dynasty produced during the reign of Emperor Lý Thái Tổ were the (), these were among the largest early Vietnamese cash coins with a diameter of 25.5 millimeters.Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư (Bản kỷ) - Quyển II (31a). All known variants of this cash coin feature the Chinese character () on the top of their reverse sides.
Generally cast coins produced by the Vietnamese from the reign of Lý Thái Tông and onwards were of diminutive quality compared to the Chinese variants. They were often produced with inferior metallic compositions and made to be thinner and lighter than the Chinese due to a severe lack of copper that existed during the Lý dynasty. This inspired Chinese traders to recast Chinese coins for export to Vietnam, which caused an abundance of coinage to circulate in the country, prompting the Lý government to suspend the mintage of coins for five decades.
Trần dynasty
The production of inferior coinage continued under the Trần dynasty. The production of both government and private cash coins happened at a large scale during the Trần period.
It was under the reign of emperor Trần Dụ Tông that the most cash coins were cast of this period; this was because of several calamities such as failed crops that plagued the country during his reign, which caused the Trần government to issue more coins to the populace as compensation. The internal political struggles of the Trần dynasty ensured the cessation of the production of coinage, and as such, no coins were produced during the entire reigns of the last seven monarchs of the Trần dynasty.
After the reign of emperor Trần Nghệ Tông the government of Đại Việt buried large reserves of cash coins in a mountain, the place of storage in this mountain later collapsed which became a contributing factor to cash coins remaining scarce after the Trần dynasty period.Lục Đức Thuận, Võ Quốc Ky (2009), Tiền cổ Việt Nam, Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục. Page 67. (in Vietnamese).
Hồ dynasty
During the Hồ dynasty the usage of coins was banned by Hồ Quý Ly in 1396 in favour of the () banknote series and ordered people to exchange their coinage for these banknotes (with an exchange rate of one of copper coins for two banknotes).Linh, Vietnamese in Vancouver Thông bảo hội sao . (in Vietnamese) Xin visa du lịch – Đặt phòng & vé máy bay – Hỗ trợ 24/7 Retrieved: 16 February 2018. Those who refused to exchange or continued to pay with coins would be executed and have their possessions taken by the government.Khâm định Việt sử thông giám cương mục (Chính biên) - Quyển XI. Trên thực tế giai đoạn này vẫn còn niên hiệu nhà Trần nhưng vì quyền lực nằm trong tay Hồ Quý Ly nên người dân buộc phải miễn cưỡng tuân theo. Despite these harsh laws, very few people actually preferred paper money and coins remained widespread in circulation, forcing the Hồ dynasty to retract their policies.Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư, Nhà xuất bản Khoa học xã hội, 1998, tập 2, trang 189 (in Vietnamese)Lịch triều hiến chương loại chí, tập 2, trang 112, Nhà xuất bản giáo dục, 2007 (in Vietnamese) The banknotes of the Hồ dynasty featured designs with auspicious clouds (one ), turtles (two ), Kỳ lân (three ), Phượng hoàng (five ), and dragons (one ).
Under the Hồ dynasty cash coins with the inscriptions () and () were introduced, but they would only be manufactured in small numbers, though the Later Lê dynasty would produce coins with the same inscriptions less than half a century later in larger quantities.Asian Numismatic Museum (Sudoku One) Coins of the Hồ Dynasty 胡朝 1400 - 1407 AD. Thanh Nguyen and Thieu Nguyen. by Dr. R. Allan Barker. Retrieved: 19 July 2017.Mirua Gosen. Published: 1966. (in Japanese)
Later Lê, Mạc, and Revival Lê dynasties
After Lê Thái Tổ came to power in 1428 by ousting out the Ming dynasty ending the Fourth Chinese domination of Vietnam, the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư reports that in 1429 it was proposed to reintroduce paper money, but this idea was rejected.Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư, chính biên quyển 10. Lê Thái Tổ enacted new policies to improve the quality of the manufacturing of coinage leading to the production of coins with both excellent craftsmanship and metal compositions that rivaled that of the best contemporary Chinese coinage.Lục Đức Thuận, Võ Quốc Ky, sách đã dẫn (in Vietnamese) After ascending the throne, Lê Thái Tổ immediately summoned the great officials in the court to discuss the production of money and issued a Chiếu which stated that:Đại Việt thông sử - Quyển II - Đệ Nhị kỷ (56a-b). "Money is an extremely necessary thing, like the lifeblood of the people, indispensable. Our country minted a few coins, but the copper coins were destroyed a lot by the Ming people, only about one percent remained. Now the domestic consumption is in short supply, in order for the currency to circulate in abundance, to please the people, it is necessary to have a reasonable monetary regulation. So it is impossible not to discuss soon, I will consider implementing." After that, the Thuận Thiên Nguyên Bảo (順天元寶) was minted, according to the regulations, 50 đồng is 1 tiền.
The Mạc dynasty, which usurped power between the years 1528 to 1592, also minted its own coinage but they began to use zinc and iron, which were cheaper metals, and they further allowed private coinage to develop which decreased the quality of the coinage. After the Lê dynasty returned to power they tried to combat these monetary practices, but the shortage of copper (as the mines where the copper came from were mostly in areas controlled by China) and the division of the country between the two rival lordships (or principalities) of the Trịnh and Nguyễn lords made these measures ineffective.
Between 1633 and 1637 the Dutch East India Company sold 105,835 strings of 960 cash coins (or 101,600,640 ) to the Nguyễn lords in Vĩnh Lạc Thông Bảo (), and Khoan Vĩnh Thông Bảo () coins. This was because the Japanese had restricted trade, forcing the Southern Vietnamese traders to purchase their copper coins from the Dutch Republic rather than from Japanese merchants as before. This trade lead to a surplus of copper in the territory of the Nguyễn lords, allowing them to use the metal (which at the time was scarce in the north) for more practical applications such as nails and door hinges.Việt Touch VIET NAM COINS & PAPER NOTES. AUTHOR: Thuan D. Luc COLLECTION: Bao Tung Nguyen Retrieved: 24 June 2017.Dutch-Asiatic trade 1620–1740 by Kristof Glamann, Danish Science Press published.Japanese coins in Southern Vietnam and the Dutch East India Company 1633–1638 by Dr. A van Aelst After this, Nagasaki trade coins, which were specifically minted for the Vietnamese market, also started being traded and circulating in the northern parts of Vietnam where the smaller coins would often be melted down for utensils and only circulated in Hanoi, while larger Nagasaki trade coins circulated all over Vietnam.