Picture this… it’s 1685.
You are standing in a settlement on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.
It is cold. The wind cuts through your coat as you enter a log building.
Somewhere nearby, a soldier is complaining about his pay.
A few years ago, he had arrived to start a new life and watched the colony grow.
The merchant is waiting for money that never seems to arrive.
And in your pocket is something that, in any other circumstance, would be almost completely worthless but right now you’re finding relief from the cold by the roaring fireplace.
You watch as the soldier nods to the merchant and said
“Une miche de pain.”
The shopkeeper grabs the bread, and the soldier reaches into his pocket for payment.
But he wouldn’t find coins there.
Instead, he, much like you, is holding a little rectangle of pasteboard.
It’s a card… in fact… It’s a Jack of Spades.
And it’s just enough for a loaf of bread.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx!
Today, we are upping the ante and traveling to the 17th century to play the hand we were dealt with during a time when playing cards were as good as gold.
Spades to Sols: How Playing Cards Became Money
What do a playing card and a five-dollar bill have in common?
Well, probably not much. Unless you happen to be living in New France in the late seventeenth century.
Back then, a playing card could buy you dinner.
It sounds ridiculous today.
But Canadians have always had a bit of a complicated relationship with what counts as money.
Think about Canadian Tire money.
In 1958, Muriel Billes, the wife of Canadian Tire co-founder and president, was inspired by companies that gave away coupons to customers and thought that branded money given at checkout could create return customers and improve business.
Since then, customers have walked out of Canadian Tire with their purchases, reached into their wallets, and found themselves holding tiny pieces of paper promising that they had, essentially, earned a few cents toward their next purchase.
To date, $1 billion in Canadian Tire money has been circulated.
It has been counterfeited, used to crowdfund albums, and was even featured on the TV show Trailer Park Boys.
But…as you’ll learn…it is not the weirdest currency in Canadian history.
For that we need to go back to New France.
In the seventeenth century, France was building a colonial empire in North America.
French explorers, missionaries, soldiers, merchants, and settlers were moving into the vast territory that stretched along the St. Lawrence River, through the Great Lakes, and down toward the Mississippi.
In 1608, Samuel de Champlain established a settlement at Quebec, and from there, the French presence in North America gradually expanded. But there were growing pains.
From slow population growth to war with England and the First Nations, New France struggled to find its footing.
80 years of hard work and determination began to pay off.
By then the population of the colony was approaching 10,000 people made up of farmers, merchants, artisans, soldiers and more.
But the colony was enormous and separated from Europe by thousands of kilometres of ocean.
And that distance created problems.
Everything that couldn’t be produced locally had to come from somewhere else.
Weapons.
Wine.
Paper.
In France, money traveled through an established economy. Coins were minted, taxes were collected, merchants accepted them, and governments could pay for things around the country.
But for the colony, all coins were minted in France and had to be shipped across the Atlantic Ocean.
While colonial authorities and some of the larger merchants used bills of exchange, smaller merchants had to do things differently.
They incurred debts for their purchases, and when coins arrived from France, they sent those same coins back as payment.
As a result, only a fraction of the coins remained in the colony.
This system worked well IF the coin arrived.
Crossing the Atlantic was dangerous, ships were at the mercy of storms and pirates.
Shipwrecks were not uncommon.
One of the most famous ones was the Chameau, which disappeared off the coast of Cape Breton on its way to New France and took with it a stash of coins with it.
The wreckage was finally found in the 1960s with all the coins inside.
Regardless, even if ships arrived, they didn’t always bring enough hard currency with them so for the most part there simply weren’t enough coins circulating in New France.
The colony’s economy was small but growing.
Soldiers and merchants needed to be paid. Farmers needed to buy supplies. The government needed to collect taxes and pay its bills.
So New France developed a habit that would become incredibly important.
It improvised.
The economy relied on a mixture of French and foreign coins, barter, credit, and various forms of paper representing money or future payment.
And then came the summer of 1685.
In 1685, New France was dealing with a serious financial and military crisis.
Four companies of troops arrived in the colony without adequate supplies or the money needed to pay them.
The situation was made worse by disease that had already devastated the army.
The governor, Joseph-Antoine de La Barre, had also led a campaign against the Iroquois that had failed to produce the decisive victory the French government wanted.
The colony was therefore facing substantial military expenses at exactly the moment its finances were strained.
And then there was the practical problem: money hadn’t arrived.
Enter…Jacques de Meulles.
He was a well-connected man.
His father Pierre was the treasurer for King Louis XIV, and the treasurer general of war supplies.
Jacques was also related through marriage to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the minister of the King.
His family was part of the French court, which meant he was almost guaranteed a prominent position.
It was nepotism at its finest.
In 1682, Jacques Duchesneau, the intendant of New France, was recalled to France.
Michel Begon, the son of a prominent official in the king’s court was supposed to fill the position but at the last minute, he was sent to the Caribbean.
So, Jacques de Meulles was appointed to the position instead.
This was how three years later, Jacques found himself in charge of the civil administration of New France He must’ve felt like a fish out of water.
He had been accustomed to the French court which was known for its glamour.
In the colony there were no palaces, no grand balls, no life of luxury.
Instead, it was just a daily struggle to survive.
He quickly discovered that the financial situation was perilous to say the least.
New France had been heavily dependent on the fur trade and by the 1680s beaver fur was going out of fashion in favor of cheaper felts made of rabbit and sheep wool.
Beaver pelt exports fell from 43,000 kilograms in 1683 to just 10,690 kilograms two years later.
There was also increased competition from English traders since the Hudson’s Bay Company had been founded in 1670.
On top of this, the colony was at constant war with the First Nations over the fur trade.
It became known as The Beaver Wars and the 80-year conflict began in 1628 and continued until 1701 when the Great Peace of Montreal was signed.
This meant that the barter of beaver pelts for imported goods suffered and the economy sagged.
It led to fewer coins arriving in the colony, and debts started to mount.
For New France to survive, soldiers were also needed.
How else do you defend against constant war?
And as you can imagine… they needed to be paid.
That typically happened in January of each year, unless coins didn’t arrive from France.
As I mentioned earlier, that’s what happened in 1685 so Jacques did what he could to raise money.
He was even paying troops, out of his own pocket.
Once the money ran out, he let soldiers work as farm labourers for whatever pay they could receive.
That worked for a time, but it was a Band-Aid solution.
By the end of summer when the harvest was done, the soldiers came for their back pay.
Jacques wrote to Paris about the situation,
“I find myself in great straits regarding the sustenance of the troops. You have not ordered the funds. Now, My Lord, from January until September, eight whole months, I have not ceased in my efforts to furnish them with sufficient to keep them alive.”
Amid the shortage of coins, he hit upon a unique idea.
Why not issue paper money?
There was just one problem.
Paper, much like anything that wasn’t produced in the colony, was in short supply.
While New France had ample trees, there was no infrastructure, to turn them into paper on a large scale.
But Jacques realized there was something, made of paper, that was readily available.
Playing cards.
In the 17th century you couldn’t just turn on Netflix and binge shows to pass the time and, in the colonies, it was even more challenging.
Remember, there was no theater, or ballets to keep folks entertained, plus that was usually reserved for the gentry.
Most people played parlour games and of course… cards.
And now they would be getting a second life… as currency.
There are 5,200 cards in 100 standard playing card decks, and if you include the jokers.
You’re at 5,400, that’s a lot of currency at your disposal.
Logically, you would think that Jacques de Meulles would just assign the value of the card as payment… for example a two of diamonds being lower value than a king of hearts.
But that’s not what he did.
Instead, Jacques de Meulles printed values on the backs of cards and put his seal on them, it didn’t matter what the font of the card.
Jacques wrote,
“No one refused them, which had such a good effect that the troops have been able to subsist as usual.”
King Louis XIV also worried that a colonial government having the authority to issue notes would weaken his control over it.
If a colony wasn’t dependent on the motherland, it could get the crazy idea of independence.
The King may have not liked the cards, but in New France people preferred them because not only were they available they were also easier to handle and transport.
In the end, shipments of coins eventually arrived, and brought the card currency to an end in 1686.
At least for a few years.
By 1690, coin shipments were once again a problem and the new intendant, Jean Bochart de Champigny, had to issue them again Eventually, playing card currency became so plentiful and common in New France that by 1714, it had a circulated value of 2 million livres.
It reminds me of when Homer Simpson exchanges $1,100 at the gate to Itchy and Scratchy Land only to discover that no park merchant accepted the currency.
Meanwhile, the French King who had originally opposed the playing card currency was now resigned to the reality that they were needed in New France.
That changed in 1715.
King Louis XIV was at war with his European neighbours, and the French treasury could not redeem the cards for coins.
Two years later, the King issued a decree that all playing card money had to be removed from circulation within three years.
And they would be redeemed for half their value, payable against bills of exchange from the Crown.
Playing card money would be worthless as of 1720.
In 1729, intendant Gilles Hocquart bought 2,000 packs of unprinted playing cards to use as currency in New France, but two thirds of them were lost in a shipwreck.
The ones that did arrive were cut to denote their value.
Under this system, a whole card was worth 24 livres which was the highest currency denomination.
If it was missing four corners, the value was halved, while half a card was worth six livres.
By1763, Britain conquered New France.
At that time, 16 million livres were in circulation and of that nearly four percent was card money.
During negotiations leading up to the Treaty of Paris which ended the war…. France agreed to convert all the card money into government bonds.
The British then decreed that there would be no more paper money, except as a war emergency, issued in their North American colonies.
Unfortunately, no original playing card money has survived through the ravages of time to our present day.
Paper rarely survives more than a couple centuries unless it is preserved in the right conditions and since playing card money was thrown away when it became worthless, the chances they would make it to the 21st century would be nearly nil.
The only evidence left of the currency’s existence is the correspondence sent from the colony to France.
All pictures of playing card money are reproductions or facsimiles.
But you never know. Things from history have a habit of popping up when you least expect it.
So, check that old creepy old oak chest in your attic. You may just find a playing card that would today…. be priceless.
*sources*
- Maclean’s Archive
- Canada’s History Magazine
- Bank of Canada Museum: https://www.bankofcanadamuseum.ca/2018/12/a-good-deal/
- Canadian Encyclopedia: https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/playing-card-money
