The East India Company outside India
By John Roberts-Lewis | Friday, 6 June 2025
The East India Company (E.I.C.) was granted its Charter in 1600 and sent out its first expedition in 1601. It carried trade goods and coined silver, some of which may have been the trade coins now better known as Portcullis money, struck in 1600. The 8, 4, 2 and 1 reales were struck without a portrait, which was said to ensure their acceptance in Muslim states (human representation is not acceptable in Islam). However, this was not repeated since the pieces failed to replace the well established Spanish dollars.
A number of expeditions followed, but the Depot in Bantam in north-east Java did not proper and was closed in 1683 or 1684. A return in 1687 to found the settlement of Fort York in Sumatra introduced silver Fanams and copper cash dumps minted in Madras between 1687 and 1695. They use the original orb and cross balemark of the London E.I.C. with G.C. over E. Twenty-four Fanams were equivalent to one dollar, and 20 cash to one Fanam, but there were only 400 cash to the dollar. All these pieces are rare as are any of the 17th and 18th century E.I.C. issues.
In 1714 coins for St Helena, a supply base used and administered by the E.I.C. for Great Britain, were issued. Consisting of a silver threepence and a copper halfpenny and farthing, they display a heart-shaped balemark enclosing V.E.I.C., being the mark of the London E.I.C. amalgamated with the New or English E.I.C.
No further coins were issued for 88 years until a copper 2 -kepings was struck in 1783 for Sumatra by John Prinseps at his private mint in Bengal. It used a balemark and gave the date and value in Arabic. Kepings, like cash, were 400 to the dollar. Also in 1783 a silver coin of 2 sookoos with the name of Fort Marlboro' was issued.
This fort was built in 1714 three miles south of Fort York, which it replaced, when a convict settlement was founded for prisoners to work in the Company's plantations.
A further issue was dated 1784. Sookoo in Malay means a part, usually a quarter, so these coins were equivalent to half dollars. In 1786 an historic issue of cooper 3, 2 and 1 keping pieces for Sumatra was the first contract placed with Matthew Boulton's Soho mint in Birmingham. The coins were neat, and well struck with a balemark on the obverse and its Arabic value on the reverse. A repeat order was struck in 1787 and also in 1798 when steam-powered machinery was in use at Soho. A mistake on this issue had the Arabic numeral for 3 on all three values, but they were accepted because of the shortage of small change.
Also in 1786, a coinage for the island of Penang began with a unique balemark coin of 1 Pie (or 1 cent at 100 to the dollar). Struck at Calcutta, it accompanied the founding expedition, the island having been ceded by the Rajah of Kedah, whose daughter had married an Englishman named Frank Light. Further coins in copper (one, a half, and one-tenth cents) and silver (half, quarter, and one-tenth dollar) followed in 1787 and 1787 respectively.
In Sumatra by 1797 an emergency coinage was needed and a half dollar in copper was str uck over ear lier 3 -ke ing pieces f or Fort Marlboro'. Only a few of these have survived and in 1798 a Soho issue of copper relieved the shortage. A further issue in 1804 for Sumatra consisted of 4, 2 and 1 keping pieces in copper. They used the arms of the E.I.C. and in 1823 and 1824 ther e wer e r ep eat orders of the sa me diameter but now lighter in weight.
In 1809 Penang requested a sound coinage and issued a contract to the Royal Mint in London. During the first decade of the 19th century locally is sued t in coinage had filled the gap, but t his was much counterfeited and also liable to be melted down. The Royal Mint had just been supplied with a Soho-built mint machinery configured for silver and gold, but their rolling equipment from John Rennie was yet to arrive. A request to Soho to supply blanks was turned down as they thought that, unofficially, it had been agr eed that they would handle the copper contracts. Eventually the Royal Mint coins, dated 1810, were produced with difficulty, being poorly struck and not arriving in Penang until 1812.
With the Netherlands being incorporated into the French Empire in 1810, the Dutch and French territories were seized by the E.I.C.. Java and the Celebes were captured in 1811 by an expedition under Lord Minto assisted by Stamford Raffles. Coinage was produced quickly by reopening the Dutch mints and by using their workers, particularly Johan Anthonie Zwekkert, whose initial Z is on many issues. The copper doits (of 1811 and 1812), half stivers (1811-15) and stivers (1812, 14 and 15) have a B, for Batavia, over the V.E.I.C. balemark. A doit of local tin was struck in 1813 and 1814, but was unpopular and much forged. Rupees and their halves were minted in silver as well as a gold half rupee. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 the island was returned to the Dutch in 1816.
The Soho mint, Birmingham, which had struck little for anyone between 1811 and 1821 produced a large order of half pennies for St Helena in 1821. Napoleon died in that year and the garrison guarding him was being withdrawn when 44 casks containing 700,000 coins arrived. Subsequently, in 1831, 35 casks of coins were returned to be melted down.
In 1824 a treaty with Holland exchanged the Dutch interests in India and Malacca for British interests in Sumatra. Malacca, Penang and Singapore (founded by Raffles in 1819), were combined by the E.I.C. into the Straits Settlements. In the same year, 1824, copper two, one and half pice dated 1825 were received from the Madras mint. The designs were copied by a local engraver from the Royal Mint 1810 issues. A second issue was dated 1828; the values were changed to pice (48 pice were equivalent to one rupee) on the Bengal Sicca rupee standard because the money of account had changed form the dollar standard in 1826.
Whilst not official E.I.C. issues, a number of Birmingham-made Singapore merchants' tokens were widely accepted, even being bought by the E.I.C. at times, to fill a vacuum in official coinage.
The numerous issues can be divided into three groups. The first was issued from about 1829 until 1844 and consists of imitations of E.I.C. and Dutch colonial coins or with coins sufficiently changed to avoid charges of forgery. Examples included substituting Island of Sumatra or Sultana (a fictitious place) for the East India Company inscription, or substituting horses for lions and changing the shield they supported.
The second group, usually better made and starting around 1831, uses Malay Arabic names fo r various native states in Sumatra and Malaya. The third group uses a cock on the obverse with Land of the Malays in Arabic and the value in Arabic on the reverse. The issues were prolific, but only one merchant, C.R. Read, Chairman of the Singapore Merchants Association, placed his name on a version of the cock tokens.
The final E.I.C. issues came from their own Calcutta mint in 1845 when copper cents, halves and quarters were supplied to the Straits Settlements. The matrix dies were engraved by Willia m Wyon whose initials appear on the truncation of Queen Victoria's head on some of the half cents. The E.I.C.'s last trading monopoly was abolished in 1853 and the Government of India Act transferred all its property to the Crown in 1858.
At its height the Company (John Company) ruled over nearly one-fifth of the world's population. Its army in the 1820s at over 250,000 men was greater than that of any European power and its navy sometimes even exceeded that of Great Britain.
