Historical Sketch

The English navigator William Keeling discovered the islands for the Europeans in 1609. In the 1820s, Alexander Hare and John Clunies-Ross established a plantation, which the Clunies-Ross family subsequently extended into a feudal rule, even assuming "kingship" over the islands. Great Britain took possession of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in 1857. The Clunies-Ross were made hereditary governors, although the effective administration was done out of Singapore. In 1955, the islands passed from Singapore to Australia. In 1978, the Clunies-Ross family sold their interests to the Australian government and formally renounced to their "king" title.

Monetary History Overview

Due to the remoteness of the islands and the feudal rule, monetary economy was not established before the integration into Australia. In 1887, a first series of tokens made of sheepskin was issued by the Clunies-Ross for payments to their workers. Two more series in sheepskin and paper tokens followed until in 1913, a series of plastic tokens was produced to celebrate the recent "enthronement" of a new ruler. All these tokens were denominated in Cocos Rupee and constituted the only form of payment allowed in the shops of Clunies-Ross plantation. There was a nominal peg to the Straits Dollar, rather symbolic as the tokens were not admissible anywhere outside the plantation. After the passage of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to Australia in 1955, Australian money got introduced. If any of the tokens were still circulating at the time, they disappeared without any actions from the authorities. In the 1960s and 1970s the Cocos Rupee re-appeared, now nominally on par with the Singapore Dollar. The plastic tokens of 1968 were maybe intended for internal accounting purposes of the Clunies-Ross plantation, but more likely they were produced for the numismatic market. Latter was definitely the case for the metallic tokens of 1977, which were produced for collectors only.

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