nabeards

Any historic finance people out there? I'm trying to determine what the abbreviated text in this chart means. It's from a 1917 magazine.

I figured out "T.T. in London" is "Telegraph Transfers in London". I think "Sov. Bnk. Buy. Rate" is "Sovereign Bank Buy Rate", though I'm not positive since there's a period after "Buy." in the original and I don't know what it would actually mean anyway. And the "Buy" in "Gold Bnk. Buy. Rt." also has the period.

"Tis." and "Mative Int." still completely elude me.

#finance #history #Shanghai #ChinaHistory #InvestmentHistory

Mar 15 at 7:41pmWeb
Show threadnabeardsMar 15
Ooooo I found something about the financial markets during the Treaty Port Era of Shanghai!
Show threadnabeardsMar 15

Sovereign Bank Buying Rate
Gold Bar Bank Buying Rate

Tls. = Taels, apparently a weight-based unit of silver for accounting purposes. Specifically, Shanghai Taels in this context since the tael measurement was different throughout China!

Mative Int. = Native Interest Rate
This was interesting, it's actually a mis-print in this issue! I found another issue to verify it's supposed to be "Native Int."!

Wow, and "Mexican" in this context actually means a specific grade of silver dollar coins, common in China at the time.

Apparently I just needed to ask the fediverse and help the universe direct me to the answers. Thanks for all of the boosts!

Show threadnabeardsMar 15

This was the source I found and parsed quickly:

The Currencies Of China: An Investigation Of Silver & Gold Transactions Affecting China. With A Section On Copper

https://archive.org/details/currenciesofchin00kann_0

Just a little light reading! 🙂

The Currencies Of China: An Investigation Of Silver & Gold Transactions Affecting China. With A Section On Copper : Kann, Eduard : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

First edition. Tall 8vo, original blue cloth, gilt. xviii, (2), 540, (xxi)-xlviii pages; color frontispiece; folding table; text tables; 2 plates of sycee...

Internet Archive
Show threadnabeardsMar 15
Here's a screenshot of my HTML version of that same table, spelling out the full abbreviations and adding some "modern" styling.
Show threadbookandswordblogMar 15
@nabeards a lot of the global economy from the 16th century to the 18tn century was sailing silver from Mexico and Peru to the Netherlands, whence it passed to China via India, and Manila Galleons carried some East Asian goods from the Philippines to Mexico where they could be carried by land to the ships waiting for silver in the Caribbean. "Its the circle of trade / and it moves us all ..."
Show threadnabeardsMar 15
@bookandswordblog so fascinating! I'm working on recreating this old magazine as an eBook and the amount of history I have learned from a *single issue* is mesmerizing.
Show threadbookandswordblogMar 15
@nabeards Wikipedia says that tael is not derived from Thaler like English dollar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_(mass)#Name_of_Tael
Liang (mass) - Wikipedia