Catalog
0,50 Franc
| Issuer | République Française - Colonies / Postes - Madagascar et Dépendances |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
| Type | Emergency banknote |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is printed in rose-red and reproduces the allegorical vignette of the French colonial Navigation and Commerce type, with two classical figures — Commerce seated at left and Navigation standing at right — set against a guilloche background. The large numeral '50' appears in the centre field, with the legend 'MADAGASCAR ET DEPENDANCES' in a bold blue rectangular panel at the foot of the note. Inscriptions 'REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE', 'COLONIES', and 'POSTES' are distributed across the upper border. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE COLONIES POSTES 50 MADAGASCAR ET DEPENDANCES |
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| Comments |
Madagascar's colonial postal administration stepping in as a currency issuer sounds like an administrative oddity, but it was entirely deliberate. The Banque de Madagascar did not yet exist in 1920 — it would only be established in 1925 — and the chronic shortage of small-denomination coinage across French colonial territories made some stopgap unavoidable. Postal authorities in several French colonies issued low-value fractional notes during and after the First World War precisely because small coins were being hoarded or had simply stopped arriving from the metropole.
P#1B is distinguished from P#1A by its serial number color. These postal fractional notes were not printed locally.