100 Piastres Laos issue

The Institut d'Émission des États du Cambodge, du Laos et du Viêt-Nam was a short-lived transitional authority, created in 1952 to manage currency for the three Associated States as France's grip on Indochina slipped. By 1954 — the year of Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Accords — it was already a dying institution. This note was printed in Paris for Laotian circulation at precisely the moment the political framework that justified its issuer's existence was collapsing.

The Laos-specific issue is distinguished from the parallel Cambodian and Vietnamese printings by its overprint designation. All three drew on the same Banque de France plates, which keeps the series easily confused in general collections.