________________
AUGUST, 1913.]
THE OBSOLETE MALAY TIN CURRENCY
The tial contains of Troy weight: 1 oz. 5 dw. 1 gr. The gold is in fineness near the English gold, and is valued at 16 dollars the tial. For great weights is used the pecool and cattee: 100 cattee = 1 pecool. The pecool contains of English averdupoiz weight 119 pounds. (5) Extract from a Letter about Merchandize. (dollars cents) 300
830
225
120
Black pepper: 25 bahar, each bahar 8 pecool, at 12 dollers the bahar White pepper: 15 bahar, at 22 dollers the bahar, is Dragon's blood: 5 pecool, at 45 dollers the pecool, is
Bees-wax: 10 pecool, at 12 dollers the pecool, is Canes; 1000
Factorage of 1025 dollers, at 2 per cent
...
29 20
102570
213
48 12
VII.
Chalmers, History of Currency in the British Colonies, 1893.
p. 382. For this settlement (Penang) the Company in 1787 and 1788 struck a silver coinage consisting of rupees, with half and quarter rupees and copper cents, half cents and quarter cents, . . . There were also 'pice' here usually of tin. For on 22nd March, 1809, a Government advertisement atates that: whereas large quantities of spurious pice are now in circulation in this settlement and Government having ordered a new coinage of pice to the amount of 4,000 dollars, which with those that have been before coined at different times, by order of Government, will be sufficient for the purposes of general circulation. Notice is hereby given that on and after the first of next month no pice will be received into the treasury of this island, except such as have been coined by the order of the Government, as before mentioned, so that 100 of which pice shall not weigh less than 4 catties of pure tin
Though the (E. I.) Company had established the rupee as the standard coin in Penang, the trade relations of the settlement constrained the mercantile community to adopt as their standard, not the Indian coin, but the universal Spanish dollar, the coin familiar to the conservative races with whom they had commerce. Therefore from the earliest days of Penang, the dollar, not the rupee, was the recognised standard of value. Writing of this Island Kelly says in his Universal Cambist of 1825 :-"Accounts are kept in Spanish dollars, copangs and pice, 10 pice make a copang and 10 copangs one Spanish dollar. The current pice are coined in the Island. They are pieces of tin, 16 of which weigh a catty or 1 lb. English. On the exchange of dollars into pice there is a loss of 2%.
p. 383. The Currency of the Straits Settlements is thus described in Low's Disertation on Penang, etc., in 1836 :-"The dollar is the favourite coin in the Straits. It exchanges in the bazaars for a number varying from 100 up to 120 pice. At present it is pretty steady at 106.7 Indian rupees are also in circulation, but gold coins are hardly ever seen. There are also half dollars, and the divisions of the sicca [Government] rupee. A sicca rupee exchanges in the bazaar for 50 pice on an average" [i. e., at par as a half dollar]. And similarly Newbold in his Account of the British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, 1839, (says)... "The most current copper coins are the cent, half and quarter cent, the doit, the wang, the wang bhara [baharu], and the Indian pice."
The total is really 1024 dollars 60 cents including "factorage"
This gives the ratio of tin to silver as 54: 1. See next note.
12 The nominal local ratio of tin to silver was 10): 1 to 10: 1. The actual ratio as shown by comparative weighments of tin money and its silver equivalents (ante. p. 13) was 7: 1. The statements here show ratios of 54, 6, 64 and 5: 1; no doubt all due to local variations in the value of tin as stated in terms of silver money.
