For much of the 18th century, Great Britain and France fought each other, vying for global supremacy. What we in the United States known as the Revolutionary War was, in fact, a proxy battle between the two European superpowers in what some scholars call World War Zero.
The last Revolutionary War battle, then, was not at Yorktown, as the history textbooks assert, but rather halfway around the world, off the coast of India. At the Battle of Cuddalore, a British naval fleet was roundly defeated by a smaller French fleet on June 20, 1783—almost two full years after Yorktown. Before the French could attack the British soldiers on land, a ship arrived with a white flag, bearing news from Paris: a peace treaty had been signed, and the war was finally over. This collection features three coins from India struck at the time of the last battle of the American Revolution: a silver datia, a gold fanam from Coorg, and a silver rupee from French Pondicherry.
