Northern Chile was first explored in 1535-36 by the Spanish army led by Diego de Almagro. Chile was administered from the viceroyalty of Peru until 1776 and by Vice-Royalty of Peru from 1776 until gaining its independence on January 12, 1818.
Spanish Escudos (XESE) were used in Chile while it was a Spanish possession. The Escudo was divisible into 2 Pesos or 16 Reales. A private contractor minted coins in 1743 and regular official minting of coins began in Santiago in 1749. Republicans took control of the Santiago mint in 1817 and began issuing independent coins, though they continued to use the Escudo system. In 1833, Chile counterstamped Argentinian 4 and 8 reales coins to increase the supply of coinage.
Chile introduced the Peso as its national currency on January 9, 1851, and introduced the decimal system with 1 Peso divisible into 100 centavos. Chile left the Gold Standard on April 19, 1932. Because of persistent inflation during most of the twentieth century, Chile has used numerous financial controls to limit access to foreign exchange, including a banking rate, brokers' rate, effective brokers' rate, resident travel rate, special trade rate, general trade rate, machinery import rate, luxury import rate, tourist rate, student expense rate, specified export rate, specified investment rate, essential import rate and raw material rate among others.
The Condor, equal to ten pesos was also used as a unit of account. The Condor/Peso (CLC) was replaced by the Escudo (CLE) on January 1, 1960 at the rate of 1 Escudo equal to 1000 Pesos or 100 Condors. The Escudo was replaced by a new peso (CLP) on September 29, 1975 at the rate of 1 Peso = 1000 Escudos. The Unidades de Fomento (CLF) is a development unit for use in insurance transactions.
Chilean banks were allowed to issue banknotes between September 24, 1865 and 1898. The Republica de Chile issued banknotes from April 15, 1879 until January 11, 1926 when the Banco Central de Chile, which had been created on December 10, 1925, took over the job of issuing banknotes. |
