5 Francs - Queen Ranavalona III Essai, aluminium

This piece is an essai — a trial strike submitted for official approval rather than circulation — produced as France was tightening its grip on Madagascar ahead of the First Franco-Malagasy War of 1883–85. Ranavalona III had ascended the throne just months earlier, in 1883, and the question of a Malagasy coinage was already entangled in the political struggle over whether the island would retain nominal sovereignty or fall under a French protectorate. It never entered circulation; the war intervened, and a formal colonial coinage would wait.

Aluminium was an unusual choice for an essai of this period, when the metal was still expensive enough to be considered semi-precious in some industrial circles.