DescriptionThe standardized coinage of the British period was very popular in the Indian Ocean and Asian trade.In the numismatic terminology of the Standard Catalog of World Coins, the British Imperial coins of India are referred to as “Regal.”When the British government took over the operations of the British East India Company in the wake of the 1858 mutiny it started a process of laying a western style government over the existing treaty relations and local jurisdictions. Numismatically speaking, the Imperial British rupees became the standard against every local currency was measured. They were used and imitated from eastern Africa to Tibet to southeast Asia.By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.
