2 Ducat

Hamburg's ducat coinage of this period was struck to the Amsterdam ducat standard, allowing the pieces to circulate freely in the Baltic and North Sea trade networks without exchange penalty. The Free City maintained its own mint authority jealously — a point of civic pride that became increasingly fraught as Prussian and Habsburg commercial pressure mounted in the late eighteenth century. The 1789–1790 date range coincides almost exactly with the opening months of the French Revolution, which would eventually cost Hamburg its independence entirely when Napoleon incorporated the city into the French Empire in 1810.