The Septinsular Republic — the Ionian Islands under nominal Ottoman suzerainty and Russian protection — was the first nominally self-governing Greek state since the Ottoman conquest, predating the independent Greek kingdom by three decades. This 1801 copper issue was among the earliest coins produced under that arrangement, struck just a year after the republic's formal constitution was ratified in Constantinople. The political reality was complicated: French Revolutionary forces had seized the islands from Venice in 1797, only to lose them to a joint Russo-Ottoman operation in 1799.
KM#1 status confirms this as the foundational type of the entire republic's coinage.
The Septinsular Republic — the Ionian Islands under nominal Ottoman suzerainty and Russian protection — was the first nominally self-governing Greek state since the Ottoman conquest, predating the independent Greek kingdom by three decades. This 1801 copper issue was among the earliest coins produced under that arrangement, struck just a year after the republic's formal constitution was ratified in Constantinople. The political reality was complicated: French Revolutionary forces had seized the islands from Venice in 1797, only to lose them to a joint Russo-Ottoman operation in 1799.
KM#1 status confirms this as the foundational type of the entire republic's coinage.