lver thaler was an accepted form of payment across North Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
When Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in 1935, the Italians need thalers to pay their way through the region. Hitler had annexed Austria and was able to seize the dies from the Austrian mint and send them to his Italian ally, allowing Mussolini’s army to produce the coins they needed.
This was a time of growing international tension. Britain also had interests in the region and needed thalers for the same reason. The Royal Mint was able to copy the dies to create their own coins and production of the ostensibly Austrian thaler carried on in London until the early 1960s.
Footing the Bill
War is often a catalyst for currency reform and the years leading up to the First World War were a golden age for The Sovereign. A model of mass-produced accuracy, its proliferation across the British Empire earned The Sovereign the moniker ‘chief coin of the world’. But, reputation alone couldn’t save it as a circulating coin.
The outbreak of hostilities meant every ounce of gold was needed to pay off debt, build up reserves and finance the war effort. This prompted the government to ask people to hand in their Sovereigns and Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s patriotic plea was heeded. By 1915, gold was no longer part of everyday coinage in London. The Sovereign was replaced by a one-pound note and the Half-Sovereign by a note worth ten shillings.
In 1913, 24,539,672 Sovereigns were struck at The Royal Mint in London. By 1917 this number had dropped to just 1,014,714 and by 1918 it was zero. Despite the demands of the war effort, the exacting production standards of these wartime Sovereigns remained resolutely consistent.
The aftermath of war is accompanied by a multitude of financial pressures: assimilating troops back into civilian life, rebuilding damaged cities and repaying loans taken out to finance the conflict. The true cost comes afterwards, sometimes with big shocks to coinage.
Along with The Sovereign, Britain’s silver coinage was also a victim of the First World War. Higher metal prices after the war meant that from 1920 the amount of silver was reduced from the centuries-old 925 sterling standard to an alloy containing only 500 parts to every 1,000. A point had been reached in the ascent of the price of silver where the bullion value was higher than the face value – something had to give. Changing the silver content of coins didn’t always go according to plan and members of the public reported coins exhibiting unusual colours.
Soon after the Second World War, the use of silver in British coinage was abandoned altogether when The Royal Mint replaced it with cupro-nickel in 1947. With the United States calling in war loans, 88 million ounces of silver was taken out of the nation’s pockets to help fund repayments.
Financing war sometimes requires secrecy and subterfuge to ensure sources of funding can be maintained. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British government worked covertly with the Rothschild banking family to help its war effort. Gold and silver coins from across the world were collected by the family in order to finance 20 years of war against France, which ended at the Battle of Waterloo.
Coins of Nathan Rothschild
Nathan Rothschild had agents across the world who supplied local currency via trading ships and lent to the British government. Coins from far and wide poured into England to pay the wages of the British soldiers and Nathan Rothschild kept a sample coin from each of these shipments.
First World War Sovereigns
Hugh Carson Andrews, a clerk at the Bank of England, was unexpectedly called upon to assist with top secret missions during the First World War. He accompanied several shipments of gold Sovereigns from the Bank of England to Amsterdam, in order to support the Dutch Exchange, and to New York, to fund the expenses of war.
The value of the shipments and the threat of German submarine attacks required absolute secrecy. Andrews carried letters of introduction with his signature to verify his identity