3 Stivers

Saint Barthélemy passed from French to Swedish control in 1784, and the Swedes administered it as a free port under the name Gustavia. The island's colonial coinage was struck in the early nineteenth century to address a chronic shortage of small change in the Caribbean trade economy. The stiver denomination itself derives from Dutch monetary tradition, an odd inheritance for a Swedish-administered French island — a colonial palimpsest in metal.

KM#4 is among the scarcer issues of this short-lived colonial series, the Swedish period ending when France repurchased the island in 1878.