2 Fanams

The Madras Presidency fanams of this period occupy an awkward transitional moment: the East India Company was consolidating its territorial grip following the Carnatic Wars, yet continued striking coinage that owed more to Mughal and south Indian convention than to any British monetary logic. The fanam had circulated across the Coromandel Coast for centuries before the Company touched it, and the 1764 issue represents one of the earliest attempts to regularize what had been a chaotic patchwork of local silver denominations.

The Stevens reference (Stev2#1.24) places this among the earlier Company fanams before the 1807 monetary reforms rationalized the Madras coinage system entirely.