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10 Piastres / Dollars = 50 Shillings
| Issuer | British Army |
|---|---|
| Year | 1815 |
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| Currency | Dollar (1858-date) |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Bon pour DIX Piastres. ARMY BILL OFFICE QUEBEC, JANUARY, 1815. TEN Dollars, redeemable at this Office, by Government BILLS OF EXCHANGE on London, at Thirty Days sight. By Order of the Commander of the Forces. Entered. Dix Piastres. X. Fifty Shillings. |
| Reverse description | The reverse bears no independently printed design elements, the note having been produced by letterpress on one side only; faint show-through of the obverse typeset text may be visible through the thin paper. |
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| Comments |
Army Bills were Canada's first successful government-issued paper currency, introduced in 1812 to fund British military operations during the war with the United States. The issue was managed directly by the Army Bill Office in Quebec under commissary general Edward Couper, and — unusually for emergency wartime paper — they carried interest, which went a long way toward convincing a skeptical merchant class to accept them at face value.
The 1815 date places this note in the final redemption-period issues, printed after the war had effectively ended. The three-denomination face — Piastres, Dollars, and Shillings — reflects the genuinely polyglot commercial reality of Lower Canada, where English, French, and Halifax currency reckonings all coexisted in daily trade.
The series was fully redeemed by 1816, which makes survivors rare; most circulating examples were surrendered for specie and destroyed.