5 Fanams

The Madras Presidency fanams occupy an awkward transitional moment in Anglo-Indian monetary history. The East India Company had been striking fanams for decades in an effort to integrate with existing South Indian trade conventions, where the fanam was a deeply embedded unit of account long before British administration formalized it. By 1808, Company authorities were already debating whether to rationalize the subcontinent's chaotic currency patchwork — a project that would eventually result in the unified rupee system of 1835, rendering issues like this one obsolete within a generation.