1 Pice - Shah Alam II

Bengal Presidency coinage of this period was issued under the authority of the East India Company, which had wrested control of Bengal's revenue and administration following the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Shah Alam II, the Mughal emperor whose name this coin formally invokes, had been effectively a pensioner of the Company since the late eighteenth century — his name on the coinage was a political fiction maintained for legitimacy, not a reflection of any actual authority he held. He had died in 1806, meaning this coin was struck a decade or more after the emperor it nominally honors was already in his grave.