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1000 Francs Porto-Novo
| Issuer | Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale |
|---|---|
| Year | 1919 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 1000 Francs |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Red-toned intaglio design with a large elephant vignette at left and a baobab tree at right, framing a central guilloche medallion with a blank white hexagonal reserve. The denomination "Mille Francs" appears in large letterpress type across the centre, with the issuer legend above and the payability clause below. A black overprint reading "PORTO-NOVO" is applied across the signature area, with manuscript date "21 Septembre 1919" and two handwritten official signatures flanking the cashier's line. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
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| Reverse lettering | Georges DUVAL . fecit. |
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| Comments |
The Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale, despite its regional name, was a private French colonial bank chartered in 1901 and operating under tight metropolitan oversight — its notes were obligations of the concession, not of the French state. This Porto-Novo issue draws on the full weight of the Banque de France's intaglio printing infrastructure, a relationship that gave BAO notes a technical quality well above most colonial paper of the period.
The Florian brothers — Frédéric and Ernest-Théophile — were among the more accomplished engravers working in Paris at the time. The 1919 date places this note squarely in the postwar moment when BAO was managing currency pressure across Dahomey and the wider AOF territories, with franc-denominated paper increasingly substituting for coin that had largely vanished from circulation during the war years.