10 Centimes

Ville de Blida issued this emergency fractional note in 1916 under the acute small-change shortage that gripped French Algeria — and much of France itself — once wartime metal hoarding stripped bronze and nickel coins from everyday commerce. Municipal and cooperative bodies across Algeria were authorized to plug the gap with locally printed bons de monnaie, and Blida, a market town in the Mitidja plain about fifty kilometers southwest of Algiers, was one of dozens that did so.

Silem printed from Algiers, and the press run for these low-denomination communal issues was typically modest, making survivors disproportionately scarce relative to their historical obscurity.