abhishreshthaa
Abhijeet S
“The British Indian Rupee”
The Danes, Dutch, French, Portuguese and British all came to Indian as trading companies thus proving that politics and economics are two sides of the same coin. Their attempts to introduce their own coinage ended in economic chaos.
Finally the rupee was adopted by the French who issued coins initially in the name of the Moghuls. Anonymous designs followed and slowly they adopted French national symbols. The Portuguese issued coins only in European designs. The Dutch and Danes issued only anonymous coins for a short period of time. The first to adopt the rupee in 1672 were the British through the British East India Company.
They issued coins initially in the names of local rulers form the Bengal, Madras and Bombay Presidencies. The British started machine minting coins and technology helped them fix the weight of the silver rupee at 11.21 to 11.66 gm. This weight difference is attributed to the various machine minted coins of the Presidencies and the contemporary regulations.
More than a century and a half passed before the Company began to put a portrait of their ruler, King William IV (1835), on the rupee coin. In the same year when a uniform colonial currency of East India Company was introduced for entire India, the weight of the then silver rupee was fixed at 11.66 gm with a fineness of .917%.
The British mints were located in Calcutta, Murshidabad, Patna, Farukhabad, Dacca, Bombay, Surat, Madras, Pondicherry…After two decades came India’s First War of Independence. Had the war been successful no other British monarch would have featured on the rupee.
In 1862 Queen Victoria became the first monarch to adorn coins of all denominations. Curiously there was no date mark on any coins from 1863 to 1873.
The Danes, Dutch, French, Portuguese and British all came to Indian as trading companies thus proving that politics and economics are two sides of the same coin. Their attempts to introduce their own coinage ended in economic chaos.
Finally the rupee was adopted by the French who issued coins initially in the name of the Moghuls. Anonymous designs followed and slowly they adopted French national symbols. The Portuguese issued coins only in European designs. The Dutch and Danes issued only anonymous coins for a short period of time. The first to adopt the rupee in 1672 were the British through the British East India Company.
They issued coins initially in the names of local rulers form the Bengal, Madras and Bombay Presidencies. The British started machine minting coins and technology helped them fix the weight of the silver rupee at 11.21 to 11.66 gm. This weight difference is attributed to the various machine minted coins of the Presidencies and the contemporary regulations.
More than a century and a half passed before the Company began to put a portrait of their ruler, King William IV (1835), on the rupee coin. In the same year when a uniform colonial currency of East India Company was introduced for entire India, the weight of the then silver rupee was fixed at 11.66 gm with a fineness of .917%.
The British mints were located in Calcutta, Murshidabad, Patna, Farukhabad, Dacca, Bombay, Surat, Madras, Pondicherry…After two decades came India’s First War of Independence. Had the war been successful no other British monarch would have featured on the rupee.
In 1862 Queen Victoria became the first monarch to adorn coins of all denominations. Curiously there was no date mark on any coins from 1863 to 1873.