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1 Ducat

Issuer Dutch East India Company (VOC)
Year 1744-1745
Type Standard circulation coin
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Reverse description Central field bearing a multi-line Arabic legend in flowing Naskh script, reading across three lines and referencing the VOC monetary authority and denomination. The inscription fills the field without any portrait or pictorial device. Small diacritical dot ornaments punctuate the legend. The entire design is enclosed within a uniformly reeded border consistent with the obverse.
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Mintage 1744 - -
1745 - -
Additional information

The VOC ducat was struck not as trade currency in the modern sense but to satisfy payroll obligations — the Company's Asian operations required hard specie for soldier wages and local procurement, and Amsterdam's bankers would not accept anything less than fine gold. The Dutch Republic's own ducats served as the template, but VOC-issue pieces circulated in a commercial network stretching from Batavia to Nagasaki.

KM#171.1 designates the Utrecht mint variant, distinguished by the mint mark rather than any substantive design difference. By the mid-1740s the Company was already mortgaged against its future — dividend payments were being funded by borrowing — but the gold kept flowing to the East regardless.

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