12 Xerafins São Tomé - José I Goa mint

The xerafim was a unit of account long used in Portuguese India before it became a struck denomination — its name derives from the Arabic ashrafi, reflecting the commercial world Goa had absorbed rather than replaced. By José I's reign, the Goa mint was operating under considerable administrative strain, caught between the declining Estado da India and the reformist pressures of Pombal's government in Lisbon. These gold issues of the 1770s were struck for a colonial economy increasingly dependent on trade with the interior rather than the intercontinental spice routes that had originally justified the mint's existence.