1 Doudou Pondichery

By 1836, the Compagnie des Indes as a trading monopoly had been dead for nearly a century — dissolved by the French crown in 1769 — but its name persisted on colonial coinage issued under French government authority for Pondichéry long after the company itself ceased to function. The doudou was a local unit of account rooted in the Tamil monetary system, subdivided well below the levels used in metropolitan French currency, and its retention on official coinage reflects how thoroughly the colonial administration had to accommodate indigenous commercial practice rather than impose Parisian standards.