World Business: The Fat Lady

Though the business of Africa and the Mideast is now largely conducted in a bewildering variety of new national currencies, many back-country people in both areas still prefer to make their deals in a coin that their ancestors have bartered with for nearly two centuries. It is the old

Austrian Empire’s Maria Theresa thaler—known to Arabs simply as “the Fat Lady.” First minted in 1751, Maria Theresa thalers (pronounced tah-ler) were carried to the Middle East by Austrian traders.

The coin was large (1⅝in. diameter), and among Arabs and Africans, who prize ample women, the profile of the Empress’ thrusting decolletage was almost as ap pealing as the thaler’s 23.4-gram silver content. So great was the demand for the coin that even after Maria Theresa’s death the Vienna mint continued to make thalers, which, to convince untutored natives of their authenticity, were stamped 1780, the year the Empress died. Decade after decade, thalers continued to tinkle at bazaars from Istanbul to Yemen. Islamic missionaries carried the coins into Africa, where traders used them to buy slaves for the U.S. South. During the Civil War, the North used them to pay for Egyptian cotton.

In the turbulent 1930s, the thaler became an international political weapon.

To finance his invasion of Ethiopia, where the thaler was legal currency, Mussolini pressured Austria into allowing him to mint the coin. To counter Mussolini, the British began minting thalers without permission. When World War II broke out, both sides furiously coined thalers to bribe African and Asian tribesmen.

Though it contains only 92¢ worth of silver, the thaler’s barter value varies from country to country, ranges up to $1.50 in Ethiopia. No one knows how many thalers are still in circulation, but at least 320 million have been minted, and the minting is still going on—but with a difference. Under prodding from Austria, the British fortnight ago promised to stop coining thalers, thus leaving the Vienna mint as the sole source. The move delighted Austrian bankers, who sell new thalers for $1.04 apiece and make an 8¢ profit on each one. To the bankers’ even greater delight, the Vienna mint hopes to increase its output of Fat Ladies from about 1,000,000 this year to 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 in 1963.