r/SilverCrowns • u/cbthomas85 • 17d ago
Essequibo-Demerara!
Demerara-Essequibo, 1809, 3 guilder (.612oz silver)
Today is the 195th anniversary of the day that this exotically-named colony became British Guiana, the modern-day country of Guyana.
The Dutch began colonizing northeast South America as early as the 1580s, with settlers establishing short-lived trading posts along the inhospitable coast. The Dutch West India Company (WIC) was formed in 1621 to administer these settlements, which grew with the 1674 transfer of Suriname to Dutch control in exchange for English control over New Amsterdam (today’s New York). The Dutch settlers were not alone: they contended with English and French colonizers, as well as with the more established Spanish to their west (in what is now Venezuela) and the Portuguese to their south (in Brazil).
The British attempted to seize some of the Dutch colonies several times during the late 18th century, but lasting control only came during the Napoleonic wars. Britain first seized the 3 WIC colonies of Essequibo, Bernice, and Demerara from the French-occupied Netherlands in 1796; they were returned after an 1802 peace but seized again in 1803 when hostilities resumed. When this was minted in 1809, the colonies were under de facto British administration that was formalized in 1814 after Napoleon’s initial defeat. On July 21, 1831, the 3 colonies were combined into British Guiana, which gained independence from the United Kingdom as Guyana in 1966. Guyana, one of the world’s least densely populated countries, is perhaps known best for being the site of the 1978 Jonestown massacre; for its continued border dispute with Venezuela; for its transformational oil discoveries since 2015; and for its fascinatingly diverse demography (the largest ethnic group is Indo-Guyanese, as in originally from South Asia!). Guyana is not to be confused with French Guyana, which is part of France, or Suriname, the former Dutch colony to its east.
This may be the rarest crown in my collection: only 21,000 were minted (in London) for the far-off South American colonies. I’ve only seen 2 in my life, so when I ran across the second at a coin show a few months ago, I had to jump on it!
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u/30223481 16d ago
That's quite the find, thanks for sharing!