1 Escalin

Britain seized Martinique from Revolutionary France in 1794 and held it until 1802, administering the island through a period when the Paris government's currency reforms made French coinage politically unacceptable in royalist-leaning colonial circles. The escalin — a denomination with deep roots in the French Caribbean monetary tradition — was retained rather than replaced, a pragmatic concession to local commercial habit.

KM#25 was produced from cut and countermarked Spanish colonial silver, the chronic shortage of purpose-struck coinage forcing the British administration to rework whatever circulating metal was available.