Duit

Gelderland's duit production in the 1780s took place against the backdrop of the Patriottentijd, the Dutch Patriot political crisis that split the republic along factional lines and ultimately triggered Prussian military intervention in 1787. Provincial minting authority was jealously maintained by each of the Seven Provinces precisely because coinage rights were a concrete expression of provincial sovereignty within the loose confederal structure — Gelderland among the most assertive in exercising that right. The resulting proliferation of near-identical provincial duits from this decade is a direct consequence of that political fragmentation.