2 Cash - Uthram Thirunal Marthanda Varma II

Uthram Thirunal Marthanda Varma II ruled Travancore under the suzerainty of the British East India Company, and the coinage issued during his reign reflects the peculiar half-sovereignty of a princely state still maintaining its own mint while increasingly subordinated to British financial oversight. Travancore was one of the few princely states permitted to continue striking copper small denomination coinage well into the mid-nineteenth century, largely because British administrators saw no economic incentive to absorb a low-value local currency system already deeply embedded in daily commerce along the Malabar coast.