Emden's thaler coinage of the mid-to-late seventeenth century reflects the city's stubborn insistence on municipal independence during a period when the County of East Frisia was pressing hard to absorb its financial and administrative functions. The city retained its own mint rights partly through its strategic value as the only deep-water port on the German North Sea coast, a leverage Emden's magistrates exercised with considerable political skill.
By 1675, output from the Emden mint was modest and episodic rather than systematic, which accounts for the relative difficulty in assembling a complete date run of this type.
Emden's thaler coinage of the mid-to-late seventeenth century reflects the city's stubborn insistence on municipal independence during a period when the County of East Frisia was pressing hard to absorb its financial and administrative functions. The city retained its own mint rights partly through its strategic value as the only deep-water port on the German North Sea coast, a leverage Emden's magistrates exercised with considerable political skill.
By 1675, output from the Emden mint was modest and episodic rather than systematic, which accounts for the relative difficulty in assembling a complete date run of this type.