1 Franc

The Direction Générale des Finances issued these small-denomination notes under the French Protectorate administration, a bureaucratic arrangement that placed French financial officials in effective control of Tunisian fiscal policy while preserving the nominal authority of the Bey. The 1921 date places this note in the postwar period when metallic coin shortages across the Mediterranean basin still pushed governments toward low-denomination paper as a stopgap.

Printed locally by Yvorra & Barlier in Tunis rather than dispatched from a metropolitan French security printer, which is unusual for colonial-era French protectorate issues — most relied on Paris or Bordeaux houses for their fiduciary paper. Local lithographic production kept costs down but limited the sophistication of anti-counterfeiting measures available.