The British Pound Stirling

Ever since London became a world financial center, due mostly to the fact that the British Empire was not only world wide, but was commercial too, the British Pound Stirling has been a benchmark of international currencies. The Spaniards built their colonial empire mostly to exploit the indigenous people of their precious metals, a short sighted goal to say the least, and they didn't follow up with exploiting the agricultural potential in much of their newly conquered territory. Thus it was doomed to miss out on long term success. The Dutch had better luck, but most of their colonies were in the South Pacific and there entailed a very, very long logistical trail. Nevertheless, they made up for this deficiency by establishing a large banking industry that helped finance much of the rest of Europe.

Many of us remember hearing from books we've read or movies we've watched words like "Shilling," "Six-Pence," or "Guinea." These were names of various coins that made up the smaller fractional denominations of the Pound Stirling. It was all quite complicated and very arbitrary based upon no logical divisions. This was simply the historical baggage that accumulated over the centuries. In 1972, Great Britain changed all this, I'm sure with a great deal of pain on the part of the population, but with relief too. The Pound Sterling became divisible by a series of [mostly] logical coinage based upon 5's and 10's. Now the coins make much more sense.

We Americans are used to dealing with mostly 4 coins, but we also recognize 2 that are not part of every day life: 1 cent, 5 cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, and the 2 less used 50 cent coin and the dollar coin. From there, everything else is paper money starting with the 1 Dollar denomination going up to the $5, $10, $20, the rare $50 and $100. We even go so far as to have a name for each coin. There's the Penny, the Nickle (named for the metal it's made of), the Dime and the Quarter. The 50 cent coin is known as the Kennedy Half Dollar because of JFK's visage on the observe.

Here in England, there is no paper money denomination below the 5 Pound note. Everything below that is coinage! Be thankful for what we have, because even though the coins in our pockets can add up fast, it's nothing compared to how fast and how heavy pockets get over here with coinage. It all starts with the 1 Pence coin and then goes to the 2 Pence, the 5 Pence, the 10 Pence, the 20 Pence, the 50 Pence, the £1 and the £2 coins. The £2 coin is distinguished as being bimetallic; essentially one coin surrounded by another, the inner being brass and the outer being silvery.

The one thing that they did when they changed there money that makes sense to me is that each denomination of their paper money is of a different size so that the blind can tell the difference between the denominations. The one thing that's going to cost them a lot of money every so often is that they print their paper money with some notable person on one side and the Queen on the other side. When she either steps aside or dies, they will have to start printing up a lot of money quickly, both paper and coins with her successor on the new money. Come to think of it, every time they change monarchs, they have to change the words to their national anthem for the same reason. Of course, The Bank of England may elect to do as we do and simply replace the bills and coins with the new monarch's visage as the money wears out and needs replacing.

There's something else that is unusual to us Americans that is part of the British monetary policy, they let certain banks print their own paper money! The Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland are each able to legally print up their own British Pound notes of the same denominations as the Bank of England and they are legal tender here on this island, though some merchants refuse to take them. And if I were to go to Northern Ireland, I'd have to get all my money changed to the Northern Irish Pounds. As I understand it, the English and Scottish Pounds are not legal tender over there! Very interesting indeed. So far as I know, there is no equivalent in Wales. I guess that is because Wales was conquered by the Normans and made them a part of England in the 1100's. It wasn't until the 1701 Act of Union that the English and the Scots were unified as one nation even though they had both been sharing the same king since King James I (James VI in Scotland) of the house of Stuart from nearly a hundred years before.

I am very interested to see what happens in the near future now that both Wales and Scotland have their own Parliaments, with certain powers reserved for the Parliament of Great Britain reserved for itself, of course. Sooner or later, the Welsh will want to have their own Pound notes printed up by their own Bank of Wales - if there is such and institution. Very interesting times indeed, now that while Europe is trying to unify under one government, Great Britain is slowly devolving in the opposite direction and splintering back up into very ancient borders and ultimately very ancient, but at the same time new countries of their own right.