5 Centimes

Municipal emergency notes of this type were a direct consequence of wartime coin hoarding across French Algeria. By 1916, small-denomination bronze and nickel coinage had effectively vanished from daily commerce — soldiers, merchants, and civilians alike were sitting on metal. Algiers, like dozens of French and North African municipalities, responded by authorizing local paper substitutes to keep low-value transactions moving.

Adolphe Jourdan's Algiers press was the dominant commercial printer in colonial North Africa at the time, handling everything from legal documents to illustrated books. Their involvement here was practical geography, not a procurement decision of any particular note.