I have talked about the background of Guangxu Tongbao’s machine-made coin minting. Today we talk about the background of Guangxu Tongbao’s machine-made coin minting. The Guangxu Tongbaojin Bureau was established in the 13th year of Guangxu. We mentioned earlier that the Qing government decided in the 13th year of Guangxu. Re-casting of Xiaoping coins, because Xiaoping coins were very scarce in the market at that time, only a batch of ten coins were cast in the early years of Guangxu.
The Baojin Bureau was severely damaged in the 26th year of Guangxu, that is, after the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded Tianjin. Therefore, the Baojin Bureau existed between 13 and 14 years. In the money bureau, I said earlier that in the early years of Guangxu, only ten coins were minted. Xiaoping coins were basically not minted. Therefore, there was a shortage of coins. Cixi decided to resume minting Xiaoping coins. It was very slow, so I proposed to import machines from abroad for casting.
At that time, the copper materials mined and transported from Yunnan were very inadequate, except that the Qing government, which was transported from Yunnan, imported large quantities of foreign copper to make machine money. After discussing with Li Hongzhang, a mint was set up in Tianjin to use machines to forge the machine-made money of the Baojin Bureau. At that time, the Central Bureau still used very traditional methods to make sand-finished Xiaoping coins. This is what we are seeing now.
Someone will ask why the amount of machine manufacturing is so large that the mechanism of the Baojin Bureau we see now is not much money? Not as many coins as the Xiaoping Baojin Bureau cast out of sand casting. What is the reason for this? At that time, after the imported machinery imported copper, it was a coin-making machine bought from the United Kingdom, and the copper material purchased from Japan was used to cast the Baojin money, which was the mechanism at the time. After a period of cost accounting, it was found that it was very unprofitable and the loss was very serious.
So at that time, Li Hongzhang wrote a very detailed report to the Qing government. It was about the disadvantages of various machines for making money. So the Qing government at that time went to study whether it could cut corners to make coins, but at that time The imported machine can only use 70% or more of copper to make coins, and the remaining 30% or less of additives can be used to suppress coins. However, the Qing government will definitely lose money very seriously, so in the end, It directly denies the machine for coining coins. At that time, the machine was not used for a long time. The local method for casting is also the sand-finding method. This is why we see now that the Guangxu Tongbao Xiaoping money of the Baojin Bureau is still used by the local method. There are many foundry castings, but the Qing government can be picked up from one coin to seven cents one coin after another by casting the Qing government through the native method.