Mindon Min refused to sign the commercial treaty Britain demanded after the Second Anglo-Burmese War, and his minting of a formal gold coinage was partly an assertion of that independence — Burma remained the last unconquered Burman kingdom. He died in 1878, one year before this coin's issue date, meaning the 1879 striking occurred under the regency crisis that followed his death, during which no successor had been formally named and the court was in violent disorder. The Konbaung dynasty would survive only another six years before the Third Anglo-Burmese War ended it entirely in 1885.
Mindon Min refused to sign the commercial treaty Britain demanded after the Second Anglo-Burmese War, and his minting of a formal gold coinage was partly an assertion of that independence — Burma remained the last unconquered Burman kingdom. He died in 1878, one year before this coin's issue date, meaning the 1879 striking occurred under the regency crisis that followed his death, during which no successor had been formally named and the court was in violent disorder. The Konbaung dynasty would survive only another six years before the Third Anglo-Burmese War ended it entirely in 1885.