Antigua dollar - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

History

The history of currency in the British colony of Antigua

Antigua

Antigua , also known as Waladli, is an island in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean region, the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua means "ancient" in Spanish and was named by Christopher Columbus after an icon in Seville Cathedral, Santa Maria de la...

closely follows that of the British Eastern Caribbean territories in general and it should not be considered in isolation. The article British West Indies dollar deals with the general history of currency in the region.

Even though Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704 brought the gold standard to the West Indies, silver pieces of eight

Pieces of Eight

Pieces of Eight is the eighth studio album and second concept album by Styx, released September 1, 1978.The album was the band's follow-up to their Triple Platinum selling The Grand Illusion album....

(Spanish dollars and later Mexican dollars) continued to form a major portion of the circulating currency right into the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Britain adopted the gold standard in 1821 and an imperial order-in-council of 1838 resulted in Antigua formally adopting the sterling

Pound sterling

The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

currency on 13th January 1847. However, despite the circulation of British silver coins in Antigua

Antigua

, the silver pieces of eight

Pieces of Eight

continued to circulate alongside them, and the private sector continued to use dollar accounts for reckoning. The international silver crisis of 1873 signalled the end of the silver dollar era in the West Indies and silver dollars were demonetized in Antigua

Antigua

in the wake of this crisis for fear that a silver standard might return. Even though the British sterling coins were made of silver, they were fractional coins of the British gold sovereign and hence they maintained their gold value. This left a state of affairs, in which the British coinage circulated, being reckoned in dollar accounts at an automatic conversion rate of 1 dollar = 4 shilling

Shilling

The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...

s 2 pence.

From 1949, with the introduction of the British West Indies dollar, the currency of Antigua

Antigua

became officially tied up with that of the British Eastern Caribbean territories in general. The British sterling coinage was eventually replaced by a new decimal coinage in 1955, with the new cent being equal to one half of the old penny.

The fixed exchange rate of $4.80 = £1 sterling (equivalent to the old $1 = £4 2s 0d) continued right up until 1976.

Banknotes

Three banks, the Royal Bank of Canada

Royal Bank of Canada

The Royal Bank of Canada or RBC Financial Group is the largest financial institution in Canada, as measured by deposits, revenues, and market capitalization. The bank serves seventeen million clients and has 80,100 employees worldwide. The company corporate headquarters are located in Toronto,...

, the Colonial Bank and Barclays Bank, all issued 5 dollars notes. The Royal Bank of Canada issued notes between 1913 and 1938, whilst the Colonial Bank issued notes in 1926 and Barclays Bank (which took over the Colonial Bank) issued notes between 1937 and 1940.

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