CHILE COLONY 8 reales date missing FJ

Description

Some of the earliest human settlements in the Western Hemisphere were in Chile. The Incas of Peru conquered the northern part but were successfully resisted by the Mapuche (Araucanians) in the southern half. The Mapuche successfully resisted the Spanish, and were only conquered in the later 19th century. To the Spanish the region was a borderland that needed to devote a lot of money to military matters. In the independence period Chile expanded its territory by force of arms. Income from nitrate mines seized from Bolivia made it richer than some of its neighbors. There was a lot of immigration from Europe. In the 20th century there were periods of democracy and other periods of military repression.

In 1494, when Portugal and Spain were getting ready to seize land in the Western Hemisphere they asked the Pope to sort out the disagreements between them rather than fighting over everything. The Pope pointed to a longitude on a map and gave Portugal everything on one side and Spain everything on the other. Worked out well for Spain. Portugal got Brazil. Spain got everything else.

By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.