This followed Dutch practice, and reflected the tendency for coins to get debased over time, and hence the nominal value of a given weight of silver to increase.

With 411 tons of lead supplied between 1633 and 1640, at least a billion coins were produced in that period alone (weighing only 0.7 g each, against the 3.5 g of copper in the original Chinese cash).

The Directors of the VOC in Amsterdam disapproved of the increased valuation of the rijksdaalder and 8 Real coins, and it was ended in 1651.

To subdivide the Indies stuiver, in 1658 an official issue of the lari known as Tangs—'fish hook' coins made of copper (based on money in use in South Asia)—was attempted.

The tang were to be officially stamped to prevent clipping, but this was unsuccessful as the copper proved too hard to work.

These concepts were essentially a misdirection of the Amsterdam administration designed to enable the Batavian officials to make private profits at the VOC's expense.

The VOC wished to introduce copper coinage, replacing the picis (the supply of which had been interrupted by the Japanese), and began to import Dutch duit in 1724 from the province of Holland.

Although two of the Dutch provinces had granted their VOC Companies permission to mint coins in the name of Batavia in 1624, the Dutch Parliament withheld its assent to this, and no such VOC coinage was issued until 1726, when there were two different classes of duits: those circulating in the Netherlands, valued at 1⁄8 stuiver, and those circulating in the Indies at 1⁄4 stuiver.

From 1753, imported gold Dutch ducats began to be counterstamped in Batavia with the Arabic letters 'DJAWA', and valued at ƒ6 and 12 stuivers, against ƒ6 for unstamped coins—a measure designed to discourage private import/export of the coins.

As the silver Indian rupee was a popular coin locally (reduced in value from 30 to 27 stuivers in 1735), a local version of it was issued in 1747, with Arabic text (reading 'Dirham [money] of the Dutch Company' and 'For the island Java the Great'), and only the date in Roman script, valued at 30 stuivers, identical in weight to the Surat rupee of the Mughal Empire.

Due to a lack of silver in the Indies caused by the war between the Dutch and English, the VOC began to issue credit paper in 1782.

The Batavian mint began in 1799 the production of 1 stuiver coinage, formed of the lead-bronze of melted cannons, and weighing about 12 g each.

The VOC was nationalised by the Netherlands (the Batavian Republic) in 1800, and a Council for Eastern Possessions was established to administer it.

A private enterprise established in 1806 saw yet more VOC-branded duits in issue, these bearing the monogram on one side and the word JAVA and the date on the other.

With the Batavian Republic in the Netherlands having collapsed, the new administration of the Kingdom of Holland under the authority of Louis Napoleon, appointed Herman Willem Daendels as Governor-General.

Daendels appropriated the private Javan duit-issuing enterprise in 1808, gradually replacing the VOC monogram with the simple letters 'LN'.

After the introduction of the rupee, the British began issuing Javan rupee bank paper instead of Real A shortage of copper currency was found; copper duits were produced in 1811–1812 bearing the British East India Company's mark 'VEIC', 'JAVA', and the date.

A lack of raw copper led to an experiment with melted cannon; this succeeded only in destroying the dies.

The Dutch closed the bank in 1818, giving people six months to exchange their banknotes before they were declared worthless.

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.

The Surabaya mint, closed in 1828, was reopened as a consequence of the high demand for coinage created by the Cultivation System.

With demand finally satiated, in 1843 the Batavia and Surabaya mints were closed permanently, and all subsequent Indies coinage was imported.

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.

Due to a lack of bullion reserves, towards the end of the expiry of the first rights, 'kopergeld', or copper money notes, were issued.

[1] The bank's rights were temporarily extended until 31 March 1860, and the silver recipes were deemed exchangeable with any valid payment instrument.

In 1942, the Japanese successfully invaded the Indies, bringing with their invasion fleet their own version of the guilder, in denominations of 1c, 5c and 10c, ƒ1⁄2, ƒ1, ƒ5 and ƒ10.

The Dutch government in exile ordered notes for issue on their return to Indonesia, and these were printed in the US in 1942, dated 1943.

In both islands the Japanese invasion money continued to circulate among both Indonesian and Dutch, until supplies ran out.

The issue in 1946 of the first Indonesian rupiah by the provisional Republican government in Jakarta resulted in conflict between the rival currencies and administrations.

Between 1946 and 1948 the Dutch succeeded in expanding the area of land under their control, but international feeling was against them, so in November 1949, peace was brokered.