5 Cash - Guangxu Zhongbao, Boo-su

Boo-su was the Manchu board designation for Jiangsu province, one of the wealthiest and most commercially active regions in the late Qing empire. By the time this cash piece was struck, the traditional cast-brass coinage system it represents was already being displaced by machine-struck copper cents introduced at provincial mints from 1900 onward. These cast pieces from the final Guangxu years were something of an anachronism even when new — the Qing monetary apparatus was contracting fast under the combined pressure of treaty-port economics and the indemnity obligations following the Boxer Protocol of 1901.