score:27
From "The origin of metallic currency and weight standards" By Sir William Ridgeway (Google books); University Press, 1892
... We saw that the Arabs of the Soudan down to the present day prefer silver to gold whilst in the earlier part of the present century when Japan was opened to European commerce the Japanese eagerly exchanged gold for silver at the rate of one to three and even less as they possessed no native silver and were charmed with the beauty of the little known metal.
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... It is almost certain that in all countries at one stage silver must have been of higher value than gold.
Afterwards as its production became greater it became equal in value and finally little by little much less valuable until at last the relation between the metals is 1/22.
All this on pages 145/146; the earlier pages give some historical document references for these.
Upvote:-3
In China, Shanghai in the 19th-20 th century trade was made in taels, made of silver.. Shanghai's wealth came from trading the merchandise China had to offer.. tea, silk..for opium brought from India.
Silver went to British banks that worth more than gold....HSBC in the 20's had a 6 to 7 million pounds worth of silver stored .
Upvote:6
While metallurgic ease, geographic access and hoarding habits would influence the amount of effective metal circulating in human society; the fundamental likelihood of the element in the Earth's crust is also informative:
A society that had less silver than gold was either unlucky in geographic location or simply not mining or trading for it in the first place.