10 Gulden

De Javasche Bank occupied an unusual position: a privately chartered Dutch colonial bank with the right of note issue in the Netherlands Indies, functioning as a de facto central bank while remaining answerable to shareholders in the Netherlands. By 1933 the Indies were grinding through the effects of the Great Depression, with commodity prices — sugar, rubber, tobacco — having collapsed catastrophically and the colonial government clinging stubbornly to the gold standard until it was finally abandoned in 1936.

Joh. Enschedé in Haarlem had printed for De Javasche Bank for decades, and their engraving and typographic standards show in the series. The firm's long relationship with colonial currency work across the Dutch empire gave them specific expertise in producing notes intended to survive tropical humidity — a genuine physical challenge for cotton-composition issues circulating in the archipelago.