By the time these heavy cash pieces were being struck at Aksu, the Qing treasury was catastrophically overextended by the Taiping Rebellion. The Board of Revenue authorized inflated denominations — 10, 50, 100, even 1000 cash — as a desperate fiscal measure, effectively debasing the copper currency to fund military expenditure. The 100 cash pieces were wildly unpopular with the public, who recognized immediately that the intrinsic metal value bore no relationship to the face value being asserted.
Aksu, deep in Xinjiang, operated semi-independently from the central mints, and output quality varied considerably across the issue years. The Hartill 22.1078 variety is among the more consistently encountered of the Aksu large-denomination types, though that is faint praise in a series plagued by irregular casting.
By the time these heavy cash pieces were being struck at Aksu, the Qing treasury was catastrophically overextended by the Taiping Rebellion. The Board of Revenue authorized inflated denominations — 10, 50, 100, even 1000 cash — as a desperate fiscal measure, effectively debasing the copper currency to fund military expenditure. The 100 cash pieces were wildly unpopular with the public, who recognized immediately that the intrinsic metal value bore no relationship to the face value being asserted.
Aksu, deep in Xinjiang, operated semi-independently from the central mints, and output quality varied considerably across the issue years. The Hartill 22.1078 variety is among the more consistently encountered of the Aksu large-denomination types, though that is faint praise in a series plagued by irregular casting.