50 Centimes

The Direction Générale des Finances issued this note under the French Protectorate administration — a colonial bureaucracy issuing currency in its own name rather than through a metropolitan French bank. Small-denomination paper was necessary because metallic coinage had been heavily hoarded or melted during the First World War years, leaving everyday transactions stranded.

Lithographie Yvorra & Barlier was a local Tunis commercial printer, not a specialized security printing house. That explains the lithographic rather than intaglio production — and it shows in surviving examples, which frequently exhibit uneven ink distribution and registration drift between color layers.