MATERIAL: Paper
TYPE: Money
CONDITION: Most of the backs of the documents have quite a lot of manuscript text on them.
NOTES: Very rare to find. Our Canadian contact living in Cuba had never come across these before.
LANGUAGE
Spanish
ITEM ID: 4484
Ten “Pagaré” Documents
DATE
Decade: 1860s
Century: 19th (1801-1900)
Notes: Dated 1861/1862
Ten documents for paying the Chinese sugar plantation workers in Cuba. (The actual currency used on a sugar plantation to pay the Chinese Colonos). Issued just after the 1850s era when most bilingual contracts were issued, this group represents very early payments made to the Colonos.
In the early years of these sugar plantation payments, besides gold and silver and other standard money, there was little other form of payment that existed. Each sugar plantation had their own currency. The Chinese – specifically – were also paid in bronze and in the 1890s with tokens, but these paper “pagaré payments from plantations are the rarest form of payment.
Collector's Favorites
An eclectic assemblage of objects coving a wide range of human history.
Colonialism / Diaspora
This collection features objects related to human colonization and displacement.
