Today, I will briefly introduce the relevant historical background of copper yuan making in Jiangnan Province, as well as the background of casting. It was established in the Shunzhi period of the Qing Dynasty in Jiangnan Province. It mainly includes Jiangsu Province and most of Anhui Province. In Kangxi 6 In 2008, in order to narrow the administrative divisions, Jiangnan Province was split into two provinces, one was Jiangsu Province and the other was Anhui Province. From then on, Jiangnan Province no longer existed. There are still many official institutions that still use the name of Jiangnan Province.
Like the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, Jiangnan Machinery Bureau, etc. that we are more familiar with, they all used the old name of Jiangnan Province, and for this reason, in 1896, that is, in the 22nd year of Guangxu, a mint was opened in Jiangning. It is called Jiangnan General Administration of Silver Dollar Manufacturing. This mint also uses the old name of Jiangnan Province. Since this mint is located in the west of Jiangning City, we also call it the West Factory. In 1898 At that time, a mint was opened in the east of Jiangning City to mint silver dollars. We called this factory the East Factory. In 1903, a mint was opened in Jiangning called the Midfield.
We used to call these three factories the old factory, because a new factory was opened in the later period. Before 1905, the three old factories cast copper coins that we call Lao Jiangnan, and Lao Jiangnan is the front. The layout is a flower on the left and right sides, and at the same time, it is a kind of copper yuan without a chronology. After 1905, these factories have cast the copper coins that we are more familiar with, which are Jiangnan Renyin, Guimao, Jiachen, Yisi and so on. At that time, because there were two factories that minted copper coins of the same age in Jiangnan Province, Jiangsu Province at the same time, there was a situation where the back was wrong. Although this happened, it was not too common.
For example, the big copper yuan made in Jiangnan in the twenty-year period of Jiachen year was not approved to be cast due to various reasons, and there are only a few in existence now. In 1906, Zhou Fu, the then governor of Liangjiang, presided over the construction. A new mint is what we call a new factory. At the same time, it changed the name of each factory to the same name called Jiangsu Jiangning Ministry of Housing Mint Branch. The original three old factories used them. The ancestor models of the copper coins were all abandoned, and they all used the template of the new Qing Dynasty copper coin with the Ning character as ten characters. This set of coins has a total of five denominations, one article, two articles, five articles, ten articles, The five denominations of twenty texts.
Among them, the Ning character in the middle part of the Qing Dynasty copper coins has two types: negative and positive. , Among them, Erwen, Wuwen, and 20wen only left a small amount of sample coins for trial minting. After 2000, the mint was renamed the Jiangnan Mint of the Republic of China. In the third year of the Republic of China, it was renamed again. It was changed to the Nanjing Mint Branch of the Ministry of Finance. After 1937, these factories were destroyed in The burning of the Japanese invaders. During this period, these mints have been casting various copper coins of the Republic of China.