2 Salueng - Rama IV

Rama IV — known in the West primarily through the fictionalized account of Anna Leonowens — came to the throne in 1851 after spending 27 years as a Buddhist monk, during which time he studied Western science and languages with enough seriousness to correspond directly with Abraham Lincoln in 1861. His monetary reforms attempted to modernize a system still reliant on bullet coinage that had changed little since the medieval period. Gold denominations like this salueng were struck in limited quantities, largely for court use and tributary exchange rather than everyday commerce.