Rupee - Angres Alibag

The Angre family were hereditary admirals — the Sarkhel — of the Maratha navy, a post held with remarkable continuity from the late seventeenth century through the early nineteenth. By 1829, that naval power was entirely spent; the British had destroyed the Angre fleet at Vijaydurg in 1756, and what remained of the family's authority by the time of this issue was largely ceremonial and landlocked. The coin is less a instrument of commerce than a final assertion of a dynasty running on institutional memory.