One of the things retained from the French revolution was the decimal system. It was introduced in the Dutch East Indies by royal decree of 8th november 1815. However, this was wishful thinking, as Raffles blithely disobeyed orders and kept the area occupied. As he was finally kicked out of his last hold-out, Bencoolen, in 1824, the decision to decimalize the islands was reiterated by royal decree of 18th February 1826. However, there was only a half-hearted attempt to provide decimal silver and the copper coins continued to be denominated in terms of the non-decimal stuiver and duit.
As before the Napoleonic wars, there was a great scarcity of copper coins. Therefore copper duits were re-struck, first at the Utrecht Mint (KM 111.2), later in Java (KM111.3). In order to avoid legal problems, they were similar to the VOC duits (the VOC had been declared insolvent and was taken over by the Dutch state) and dated with the frozen year 1790.
New coppers were inscribed 5 - 1/16 - G, presumably meaning that there were 80 duits to the Dutch silver gulden. The locals happily ignored this, as there was little or no silver in circulation. From 1833, decimal 1 and 2 cent pieces were introduced and ... used as 1 and 2 duit pieces. Meanwhile, the scarcity of copper continued, mainly because the Dutch silver coins were slightly undervalued against copper. Therefore, local mints were opened again to strike Utrecht duits (KM 111.4). Your coin is one of those.
The colonial monetary system was completely reformed by law of 1st May 1854. Old copper and paper money was withdrawn, new, lighter and much better struck coins introduced alongside regular Dutch coin. It had taken 51 years from the surrender at Waterloo too introduce the decimal system in the Netherlands East Indies. The reformed system was basically in effect (with some marginal tinkering) until the second world war and the end of the colonial era.
Peter
