When Hong Kong was established as a free trading port in 1841, there was no local currency in everyday circulation. Foreign currencies such as Indian rupees, Spanish or Mexican 8 reales, and Chinese cash coins circulated.[5] Since 1825, it had been the policy of the British government to introduce sterling silver coinage to all of its colonies, and to this end, in 1845 the Spanish or Mexican 8 reales coins were set at a legal tender value of 4 shillings, 2 pence sterling (50 pence).[citation needed] But just as in the case of the British North American colonies, the attempts to introduce the sterling coinage failed to overcome the strong local adherence to the silver Spanish dollar system that had been in wide circulation across the Far East, emanating for centuries from Manila in the Philippines as part of the Spanish East Indies in the Spanish colonial empire through the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade with the coins minted in the Spanish Americas in Mexico or Peru or Bolivia.