10 Dollars

The British North Borneo Chartered Company held territorial administration rights over what is now Sabah, Malaysia, from 1881 until the Japanese occupation in 1941 — one of the last privately governed colonial territories on earth. Its banknotes functioned as legal currency within those borders, an arrangement that would look extraordinary today but was entirely ordinary to the Company's administrators in Jesselton.

Bradbury, Wilkinson engraved and printed the entire series to a high standard; the firm had long handled sensitive security printing for colonial administrations and smaller sovereign issuers worldwide. The 1927 date places this note in the middle of a relatively stable interwar period for the Company, before rubber price collapses and political pressures began eroding the chartered model.

The Company's currency authority was extinguished permanently when Japan occupied North Borneo in January 1942.