½ Stiver – Demerara and Essequibo

In 1813, the colonies of Demerara and Essequibo (formally united as the Colony of Demerara-Essequibo under British control since 1803) faced a chronic and disruptive currency shortage. The local economy, dominated by sugar and coffee plantations reliant on enslaved African labour, operated within a complex monetary ecosystem. Officially, British sterling was the standard, but in practice, a multitude of foreign coins circulated, primarily Spanish dollars (pieces of eight) and their cut fractions (bits), alongside Dutch guilders and Portuguese joes from the prior Dutch colonial period. This scarcity of official coinage severely hampered daily transactions and commercial exchange.

The problem was systemic. Planters were deeply indebted to British merchants, and much of the hard currency that did arrive was immediately exported to settle these metropolitan debts, draining the colony. To facilitate local trade, merchants and planters increasingly resorted to issuing private paper notes or "promissory notes," which were essentially IOUs. While these notes provided a necessary medium of exchange, their value was precarious, being entirely dependent on the credibility and solvency of the individual issuer, leading to frequent losses and disputes.

The British colonial administration, recognising the instability, had taken some steps to regulate the system. A pivotal 1809 proclamation had attempted to standardise the rated value of the various foreign coins in relation to sterling, setting a "currency" value above their intrinsic metal worth to keep them in circulation. However, by 1813, these measures were proving insufficient. The core issues of currency drain and reliance on insecure private paper persisted, creating an environment of financial uncertainty that would eventually lead to the establishment of the first official colonial bank, the Demerara Bank, in 1836, as a more structured response to the enduring monetary crisis.