INDIA, BEIC, Bombay Presidency, rupee, (1832-35 AD), Surat mint

Description

In the time of Emperor Aurangzeb the Company made a deal to strike the rupees for Surat, some of them at least. Surat was the biggest port in India at the time. For more than a century they continued striking rupees that say they are made in Surat from their mint in Bombay.

The English East India Company established its first trading post in Surat in 1612, on a grant from the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. They moved their headquarters to Bombay Island in 1687 when English king Charles II acquired it as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza of Portugal. The Bombay Presidency came to encompass most of western India.

The Europeans started coming to India by sea in the late 15th century, and started a policy of war and trade that continued until the 20th century. The Portuguese started the colonizing movement, then, in succession, the Spanish, Dutch, British, French, and some other European nations all went “Hey, what about us?” and proceeded to grab territory from people less well armed. The British East India Company was a royal charter limited liability corporation with a license to do whatever they wanted in India, long as they paid their stipulated charges. Starting out with trading posts, then meddling in local politics, then poaching territory, the Company came to dominate the actual Mughal Empire and make the Emperor into a puppet. Then they blew it for the usual blowhard delusions of grandeur reasons and had to beg their home government to save them, which it did. That’s how Queen Victoria became Empress of India.

South Asia generally is taken to include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Some people would like to include Afghanistan and Burma, but that’s a minority opinion.

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.