Several things can be learned from this little Haitian coin. It was part of the batch I purchased this last weekend. The first thing you may notice is the peculiar spelling of the country name on this 19th Century coin. The country is spelled “Hayti” on this early piece.
The next thing you may notice is the year AN13 on the coin. There are two dating systems used on 19th Century Haitian coins. One dating system is the “Christian” dating system and the other is the “Revolutionary” dating system. In 1803 the French were permanently ousted by the Hayti revolution. After 1803 the new republic used a revolutionary dating system where each year after the revolution was AN1, AN2, AN3, etc. Therefore, the depicted coin dated AN 13 would be 1816 using the Christian dating system. According to Kraus, the establishment of Haiti as a republic makes it the oldest black republic in the world and the 2nd oldest republic (next to the United States) in the Western Hemisphere. Please post your coins from Haiti.
