guilder

guilder, former monetary unit of the Netherlands. In 2002 the guilder ceased to be legal tender after the euro, the monetary unit of the European Union, became the country’s sole currency.

The guilder was adopted as the Netherlands’ monetary unit in 1816, though its roots trace to the 14th century, when the florin, the coinage of Florence, spread to northern Europe, where it became known as the guilder. (Indeed, the abbreviation for the Dutch currency remained “Hfl,” which denoted it as the Holland florin.) When the guilder was introduced in 1816, it replaced the French franc. It included an inscription (“God be with us”)—the guilder was among the first coins to bear an inscription—to help protect its value by discouraging people from shaving the coin’s precious silver. The Nazis abolished the guilder as the country’s currency when they occupied the Netherlands during World War II. Nevertheless, the exiled government promised that the currency would be legal after the war, and few people exchanged the Dutch currency. The government-in-exile had millions of silver coins minted in the United States, and, after the country was liberated from the Nazis, people again began melting down the currency to use the silver. In 1948 the government introduced nickel coins.

Part of the legacy of Dutch colonialism, the guilder was adopted in Suriname and in the former Netherlands Antilles; both the Suriname and the Netherlands Antillean guilder were divided into 100 cents.