1000 Livres

The Intendance Générale des Colonies issued this note to address chronic specie shortages across French Caribbean territories — a problem that had plagued colonial administrators for over a century by 1790. Coin drained steadily out of the islands through trade imbalances, and metropolitan France rarely replenished it adequately.

The timing is significant. By 1790, the Revolution had already begun dismantling the institutional structures that gave these colonial emissions their authority. Notes issued that year existed in an administrative and political vacuum that only deepened as the decade progressed, making redemption increasingly theoretical.

Survivors at any grade are uncommon — colonial paper from this period suffered badly from humidity, insect damage, and the general disorder of the revolutionary years.