Requiem for the Currencies
They emerged during the worst of times or as a way to blot out the memories of the worst of times. They offered a stark break with the past and the hope of a better future. They were one way provinces evolved into states, and states gained global influence.
'Francs for All'
Soon after the aristocracy were jailed and the "peasants with pitchforks" began their reign of terror, the French franc was introduced as the only legal coinage in the French Republic. As Napoleon's armies conquered most of Europe, the franc became one of the most respected currencies for trading purposes. In a gesture of apparent non-creativity, when Belgium gained independence from France in 1830, it declared its currency would be the Belgian franc. When Luxemburg won independence, it declared its currency would be the Luxemburg franc. These variations of the franc were not tied to the French franc in any way that differed from the general methods of currency valuation applied during that era.
And now the franc is no more. The French franc vanished a week and a half ago. The Belgian and Luxemburg versions of the franc vanished from trading on 1 March 2002. Now the only European currency to bear the name franc is the Swiss franc.
'Good-bye to the Guilder'
Another euro-zone currency with a long history was the Dutch guilder. The guilder existed in its earliest form since the fourteenth century. It was cast as silver coins as early as the seventeenth century and experienced several revaluations during successive silver crises when the silver coins were horded. During the second world war some shipments of silver guilders were sent to the US to create casting plates to produce alloy-based guilders to ensure the Dutch people would have some money to circulate after the war. Although a shipment of the alloy-based guilders were cast and set to deliver to Amsterdam in 1944, the US-made coins were lost in transit due to attacks by German U-boats.
After the war the silver coins were again horded, and the government converted entirely to the alloy-based composition. As the euro-zone coinage with the longest continuous history, the guilder was the first to vanish from trading.
'Liras, Escudos, Pesatas, and Punts'
A rather disparate seeming group of currencies to throw together into one category, the money used in Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland have had no extensive impact on the global trading system. The Italian lira emerged in 1861 when the various Italian city-states united to form the modern state of Italy which was at that time governed as a monarchy. The Portuguese escudo emerged in 1910 when Portugal ousted its monarchy. The Spanish pesata was a nineteenth century creation designed purely to help Spain negate some of its heavy debt burden. The Irish punt (originally known as the Irish pound) evolved in 1921 when the Irish Free State separated from the United Kingdom.
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