When Napoleonic France absorbed the Netherlands in 1810, Britain seized Dutch colonial possessions before French control could consolidate. Java fell to a British amphibious assault in August 1811, and Thomas Stamford Raffles was installed as Lieutenant-Governor. The VOC had been formally dissolved since 1799, but its copper coinage infrastructure remained, and the British administration continued striking stuivers using existing VOC dies and planchets rather than commission new colonial types — a purely pragmatic decision driven by the need to maintain a functioning trade currency in the archipelago.
The four-year production window ended with Java's return to Dutch authority under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, formalized in handover by 1816.
When Napoleonic France absorbed the Netherlands in 1810, Britain seized Dutch colonial possessions before French control could consolidate. Java fell to a British amphibious assault in August 1811, and Thomas Stamford Raffles was installed as Lieutenant-Governor. The VOC had been formally dissolved since 1799, but its copper coinage infrastructure remained, and the British administration continued striking stuivers using existing VOC dies and planchets rather than commission new colonial types — a purely pragmatic decision driven by the need to maintain a functioning trade currency in the archipelago.
The four-year production window ended with Java's return to Dutch authority under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, formalized in handover by 1816.