Dollar is the name of more than 25 currencies. The United States dollar, named after the international currency known as the Spanish dollar, was established in 1792 and is the first so named that still survives. Others include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Eastern Caribbean dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, Trinidad and Tobago Dollar and several others. The symbol for most of those currencies is the dollar sign $ in the same way as many countries using peso currencies. The name "dollar" originates from Bohemia and a 29 g silver-coin called the Joachimsthaler.
The Eastern Caribbean dollar is the currency of all seven full members and one associate member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). The successor to the British West Indies dollar, it has existed since 1965, and it is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $ or, alternatively, EC$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. The EC$ is subdivided into 100 cents. It has been pegged to the United States dollar since 7 July 1976, at the exchange rate of US$1 = EC$2.70.
Pound is the name of various units of currency. It is used in some countries today and previously was used in many others. The English word "pound" derives from the Latin expression lībra pondō, in which lībra is a noun meaning 'pound' and pondō is an adverb meaning 'by weight'. The currency's symbol is '£', a stylised form of the blackletter 'L', crossed to indicate abbreviation.
Currency substitution is the use of a foreign currency in parallel to or instead of a domestic currency.
Sterling is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound is the main unit of sterling, and the word pound is also used to refer to the British currency generally, often qualified in international contexts as the British pound or the pound sterling.
The Hong Kong dollar is the official currency of Hong Kong. It is subdivided into 100 cents. Historically, it was also subdivided into 1000 mils. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is the monetary authority of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong dollar.
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, and Australia and other countries, a total of 44 countries after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent states. The Bretton Woods system required countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollars to within 1% of fixed parity rates, with the dollar convertible to gold bullion for foreign governments and central banks at US$35 per troy ounce of fine gold. It also envisioned greater cooperation among countries in order to prevent future competitive devaluations, and thus established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to nations with balance of payments deficits.
In public finance, a currency board is a monetary authority which is required to maintain a fixed exchange rate with a foreign currency. This policy objective requires the conventional objectives of a central bank to be subordinated to the exchange rate target. In colonial administration, currency boards were popular because of the advantages of printing appropriate denominations for local conditions, and it also benefited the colony with the seigniorage revenue. However, after World War II many independent countries preferred to have central banks and independent currencies.
The Belize dollar is the official currency in Belize. It is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or alternatively BZ$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies.
The pound was the currency of Australia from 1910 until 14 February 1966, when it was replaced by the Australian dollar. Like other £sd currencies, it was subdivided into 20 shillings, each of 12 pence.
A currency union is an intergovernmental agreement that involves two or more states sharing the same currency. These states may not necessarily have any further integration.
The silver standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of silver. Silver was far more widespread than gold as the monetary standard worldwide, from the Sumerians c. 3000 BC until 1873. Following the discovery in the 16th century of large deposits of silver at the Cerro Rico in Potosí, Bolivia, an international silver standard came into existence in conjunction with the Spanish pieces of eight. These silver dollar coins played the role of an international trading currency for nearly four hundred years.
The Straits dollar was the currency of the Straits Settlements from 1898 until 1939. At the same time, it was also used in the Federated Malay States, the Unfederated Malay States, Kingdom of Sarawak, Brunei, and British North Borneo.
The pound was the currency of the Canadas until 1858. It was subdivided into 20 shillings (s), each of 12 pence (d). In Lower Canada, the sou was used, equivalent to a halfpenny. Although the £sd accounting system had its origins in sterling, the Canadian pound was never at par with sterling's pound.
The pound was the currency of Bermuda until 1970. It was equivalent to sterling, alongside which it circulated, and was similarly divided into 20 shillings each of 12 pence. Bermuda decimalised in 1970, replacing the pound with the Bermudian dollar at a rate of $1 = 8s.4d., equal to the US dollar.
The region known as the British West Indies included British Guiana on the South American mainland, British Honduras in Central America, Bermuda, The Bahamas, and Jamaica, along with its former dependencies of the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It also included the Eastern Caribbean territories of Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands.
British involvement in the Middle East began with the General Maritime Treaty of 1820. This established the Trucial States and the nearby island of Bahrain as a base for suppressing sea piracy in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, in 1839 the British East India Company established an anti-piracy station in Aden to protect British shipping that was sailing to and from India. Involvement in the region expanded to Egypt in 1875 because of British interests in the Suez Canal, with a full scale British invasion of Egypt taking place in 1882. Muscat and Oman became a British Protectorate in 1891, and meanwhile Kuwait was added to the British Empire in 1899 because of fears surrounding the proposed Berlin-Baghdad Railway. There was a growing concern in the United Kingdom that Germany was a rising power, and about the implications that the proposed railway would have as regards access to the Persian Gulf. Qatar became a British Protectorate in 1916, and after the First World War, the British influence in the Middle East reached its fullest extent with the inclusion of Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq.
Sterling was the currency of many, but not all parts of the British Empire. This article looks at the history of sterling in the Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific region.
The United States dollar was established as the world's foremost reserve currency by the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944. It claimed this status from sterling after the devastation of two world wars and the massive spending of the United Kingdom's gold reserves. Despite all links to gold being severed in 1971, the dollar continues to be the world's foremost reserve currency. Furthermore, the Bretton Woods Agreement also set up the global post-war monetary system by setting up rules, institutions and procedures for conducting international trade and accessing the global capital markets using the US dollar.
Prior to European colonization, early Aboriginal Australian communities traded using items such as tools, food, ochres, shells, raw materials and stories, although there is no evidence of the use of currencies.
