Portugal had introduced a comprehensive paper money and fractional currency for the Mozambique escudo in 1914, but the coinage used within the colony was domestic Portuguese. And so it stayed until 1935-36.
The 1936 pieces like this one were the first 1-escudo coins bearing Mozambique’s name, and can perhaps be best understood against a background of the then-new Salazar government’s effort to reel its colonies back in, and to make them predominantly public properties once more. (Private concessions held by chartered companies were declining—but still strong—forces within Mozambique when this 1936 1-escudo was coined.)
Most anyone who has chased one of these coins (the ’36 50-centavo too) for a collection knows that they often come “browned.” What might have been the cause, I can’t say. Alloy? Climate? Whatever it was, its victims are easy to find.
And a final note about these coins: they have a tiny thread of German history running through them. The Kionga Triangle, a very small (c.400-square mile) piece of the former German East Africa, was taken (retaken?) by Portugal as a result of WWI and added to Mozambique.
In that one tiny area, anyway, these 1936 Mozambique 1-escudos spent time retracing the steps of the old turn-of-the-century DOA coinage.
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