1 Guilder - George III

Demerara and Essequibo had been a Dutch colony before Britain seized it during the Napoleonic Wars, and the 1809 guilder issue reflects that administrative awkwardness directly — the denomination itself is Dutch, struck under British authority for a colony that would not be formally ceded to Britain until the Congress of Vienna in 1814. The colonial government issued these pieces to address a chronic shortage of circulating specie, a problem endemic to Caribbean colonies where coin habitually drained back to Europe.

The .816 fineness mirrors Dutch guilder standards rather than British sterling, a deliberate concession to local commercial expectations.