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various handwritten amounts

Issuer Ad-Interim Administration Fiji Banking and Commercial Company Limited, Levuka
Year 1874
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Currency Dollar (1872-1873)
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Obverse lettering CERTIFICATE OF INDEBTEDNESS.
SALARY ACCOUNT.
Treasury, Levuka,
We hereby certify that the Government of Fiji is indebted to
in the sum of
Sterling, which amount will be payable to his order Four Months after date.
Treasurer.
Chief Secretary.
Accountant.
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Variants P#24a - issued note Currency of forty days
P#24ar - remainder Currency of forty days
P#24b - cancelled issue Currency of forty days
P#24c - issued note Currency of four months
P#24cr - remainder Currency of four months
P#24d - cancelled issue Currency of four months
P#24e - issued note Currency of six months
P#24f - cancelled issue Currency of six months
P#24g - issued note Currency of twelve months
P#24h - cancelled issue Currency of twelve months
P#24r1 - remainder Currency of six months
P#24r2 - remainder Currency of twelve months
Comments

The Fiji Banking and Commercial Company was chartered in the early 1870s to service a colony that was still, technically, independent — Britain did not formally annex Fiji until October 1874. These notes therefore predate Crown rule by months and were issued under a commercial banking licence granted by the indigenous Fijian government. The "Ad-Interim Administration" designation reflects the transitional authority that governed the company's operations during an unusually unstable period of chieftaincy politics and European settler pressure.

W. Cook of Exeter was a provincial printer, not a specialist banknote house. The handwritten denomination blanks were almost certainly a deliberate workaround — avoiding the cost and lead time of engraved plates for each value, and allowing the company to issue whatever amounts the moment required.

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