The piastre de commerce was the currency of French Indochina between 1885 and 1952. It was subdivided into 100 cents, each of 2~6 sapèques. The name piastre (), from Spanish pieces of eight (pesos), dates to the 16th century and has been used as the name of many different historical units of currency. Denominations The currency of French Indochina was divided into the piastre, cent / centime, and sapèque units. One piastre equals 100 cents and one cent equals between 2 and 6 sapèques depending on the dynasty and reign era. According to that ratio, a French Indochinese piastre coin is worth from 200 to 600 traditional Vietnamese cash coins. The Obverse of the banknotes and coins were inscribed in the French language, while the reverse side had inscriptions written in Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese Latin script, Lao, and Khmer scripts, but sometimes only French inscriptions were written. History Prior to the arrival of the French in Indo-China in the second half of the 19th century, cash coins similar to those used in the provinces of China circulated in the area that is nowadays known as Vietnam. There was also a silver milled dragon coin and associated subsidiary coinage in circulation. The Tự Đức Thông Bảo dragon coin is believed to have been in imitation of the Spanish silver dollar or Philippine peso or Mexican peso which also circulated widely in the region at that time emanating from the Philippines as part of the Spanish East Indies of the Spanish colonial empire, however the dragon dollars were worth less because the fineness of the silver was less than that in the Spanish and Mexican dollars. In the region that is nowadays Cambodia and Laos, the Siamese coinage circulated and Cambodia had its own regional varieties of the Siamese Tical (Thai Baht). The French began their Indo-Chinese empire in 1862 with Cochinchina which is the area around the Mekong Delta and Saigon, and which is nowadays the extreme southern part of Vietnam. This empire very quickly expanded to include Cambodia which had been a vassal state of the Kingdom of Siam. In 1875, the French introduced a Cambodian franc to Cambodia. Although these francs were minted in Belgium between 1875 and 1885, they always bore the date 1860. The French also began to introduce a subsidiary coinage in 'cents' into Cochinchina in the late 1870s. These cents were actually subsidiary coinage of