21/4 Pence TOBAGO Countermark

Tobago's 1798 countermarking program was a direct response to the chronic coin shortage that plagued the British Caribbean colonies throughout the late eighteenth century. With official sterling in perpetual short supply, colonial administrators resorted to countermarking whatever foreign silver was at hand — in this case, small billon pieces — to authorize them as local currency at a fixed shilling value.

Tobago had only recently passed from French to permanent British control, formalized by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783.