1 Sou imitating the sol aux balances

Saint-Domingue's monetary supply was chronically strangled throughout the colonial period — metropolitan France shipped insufficient specie to the colony, forcing local administrators and merchants to tolerate a chaotic mix of cut coins, countermarked pieces, and outright imitations. This piece imitates the French sol aux balances, a type that had itself been discontinued decades earlier, which tells you something about how desperate the circulating medium had become by 1801.

That year sits at the violent hinge of the Haitian Revolution: Toussaint Louverture had consolidated control over the entire island by January. These local copper issues circulated in a colony that would cease to exist under that name within three years.