(sold for $100.0)

1764, Suriname (Dutch Colony). Beautiful Copper Duit Coin. Rare 1-Year Type!

Mint Year: 1764 Reference: KM-8.1. Condition: A nice VF! Denomination: Duit (struck for the Society of Suriname) Material: Copper Diameter: 20mm  Weight: 1.61gm

Obverse: Tobacco plant, splitting date (17-64). Reverse: Inscription in three lines. Legend: SOCIETEIT VAN SURINAME

The Society of Suriname (Dutch: Sociëteit van Suriname) was a Dutch private company, modelled on the ideas of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and set up on 21 May 1683 to profit from the management and defence of the Dutch Republic's colony of Suriname. It had three participants, with equal shares in the costs and benefits of the society; the city of Amsterdam, the family Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck, and the Dutch West India Company. Only through mutual consent could these shareholders withdraw from the society. Although the organization and administration was of the colony was limited to these three shareholders, all citizens of the Dutch Republic were free to trade with Suriname.  Also, the planters were consulted in a Council of Police, which was a unique feature among the colonies of Guyana. Its governors included Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck, Johan van Scharphuizen, and Paulus van der Veen. The Society was nationalized by the Batavian Republic in November 1795, as the Patriottentijd deemed the governing of colonies by chartered companies a thing of the past.

Surinam was a Dutch plantation colony in the Guianas, neighboured by the equally Dutch colony of Berbice to the west, and the French colony of Cayenne to the east. Surinam was a Dutch colony from 26 February 1667, when Dutch forces captured Francis Willoughby's English colony during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, until 15 December 1954, when Suriname became a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The status quo of Dutch sovereignty over Surinam, and English sovereignty over New Netherland, which it had conquered in 1664, was kept in the Treaty of Breda of 31 July 1667, and again confirmed in the Treaty of Westminster of 1674.

After the other Dutch colonies in the Guianas, i.e., Berbice, Essequibo, Demerara, and Pomeroon, were lost to the British in 1814, the remaining colony of Surinam was often referred to as Dutch Guiana, especially after 1831, when the British merged Berbice, Essequibo, and Demerara into British Guiana. As the term Dutch Guiana was used in the 17th and 18th to refer to all Dutch colonies in the Guianas, this use of the term can be confusing (see below).