page_title: Netherlands Indies gulden
section_title: Dutch rule (restored)
hierarchical_section_title: Netherlands Indies gulden / History / Dutch rule (restored)
caption_attribution_description: English: One gulden, 1815 first year of banknote issue for the Kingdom of the Netherlands administration of the East Indies.
context_page_description: The gulden was the unit of account of the Dutch East Indies from 1602 under the United East India Company, following Dutch practice first adopted in the 15th century. A variety of Dutch, Spanish and Asian coins were in official and common usage. After the collapse of the VOC at the end of the 18th century, control of the islands reverted to the Dutch government, which issued silver 'Netherlands Indies' gulden and fractional silver and copper coins until Indonesian independence in 1945.
context_section_description: Dutch rule was restored in 1814–1816 as a result of the treaty between the Netherlands and Britain returning the former Dutch possessions. The first coins to be minted were at the Surabaya mint: duits (1814–1826) and half duits (1814–1822) of the 'INDIA BATAV' design. The half duits were updated to read ​¹⁄₈ ST (stuiver), minted 1822–1826, while ​¹⁄₄ ST coins were minted 1822–1826. As no double duit designs existed of modern design, that coin only appeared as ​¹⁄₂ ST, from 1818 to 1828. Starting from 1822, 'INDIA BATAV' was replaced with 'NEDERL INDIE' on all coins.
  The Indies government in 1815 issued a series of credit paper, with denominations of 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 300, 600 and 1000 gulden. De Bank Courant en Bank van Leening, which was woefully short of capital, was nationalized in 1817. The Dutch closed the bank in 1818, giving people six months to exchange their banknotes before they were declared worthless.
  There had long been a shortage of copper coinage in the Indies, and as a consequence Chinese and Japanese copper coins were in general circulation. French centime coins had been imported in 1811, but subsequently withdrawn; in 1818 to address the shortage, copper bonks were once again issued in ​¹⁄₂, 1, and 2 stuiver denominations. Although 400,000 gulden-worth were produced, they had been severely debased at 15 g of copper to the stuiver, and they were eventually withdrawn in 1826.
  The Surabaya mint, closed in 1828, was reopened as a consequence of the high demand for coinage created by the Cultivation System. Duit and double duit coins, which had, on the initiative of the mint, the decimal denominations 1 C (cent) and 2 C, were minted 1833–1841; in total around one billion 1 cent and half a billion 2 cent coins were minted, which, alongside the minting of 1790-dated 'Utrecht' VOC duits (which were minted locally, as the VOC duits were popular with the population, using imported dies of the 18th century design but with different mintmarks) in 1827, 1834, 1835, 1840, 1841, 1842 and 1843. The only ever VOC double duits, also dated 1790, were minted 1840–1843. With demand finally satiated, in 1843 the Batavia and Surabaya mints were closed permanently, and all subsequent Indies coinage was imported.
  The first silver coinage minted for the colony were 99,000 gulden coins minted in Utrecht in 1821 (several million more were minted in 1839 and 1840). ​¹⁄₄ gulden and ​¹⁄₂ gulden coins were minted in 1826 and 1827 in numbers over a million, with the former also minted in 1840.
  Coinage was finally fully decimalised in 1854, with copper ​¹⁄₂, 1 and 2​¹⁄₂ cents and silver ​¹⁄₂₀, ​¹⁄₁₀ and ​¹⁄₄ gulden (although the 1821–1840 coinage continued to circulate). The new coinage bore Arabic script alongside Dutch language, which earlier Dutch-minted had not done. The ​¹⁄₂₀ gulden was only issued in 1854 and 1855, because it was too small to be convenient, but all other denominations continued to be issued until 1945, with copper changing to bronze from 1914, the addition of silver 1 and ​2 ¹⁄₂ gulden coins in 1943 (in earlier years regular Dutch coins of ​¹⁄₂, 1 and ​2 ¹⁄₂ gulden had circulated alongside the Indies ones), and a copper-nickel 5 cent that was issued in 1913, 1921 and 1922. No coins in any denomination were minted between 1861 and 1881. The last coins are dated 1941–1945 and were minted in the USA while the Dutch were tied up in World War II and the Japanese were ruling the Indies.
caption: One gulden from the first Dutch government issued paper money in the Netherlands Indies (1815).
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