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0,50 Franc
| Issuer | République Française - Colonies / Postes - Madagascar et Dépendances |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
| Type | Emergency banknote |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE COLONIES POSTES 50 MADAGASCAR ET DEPENDANCES |
| Reverse description | The reverse is printed in olive-green on plain paper and carries a central intaglio vignette of a zebu (Malagasy humped ox) standing in profile to the right, rendered with fine line engraving against a lightly stippled ground with sparse vegetation at the base. |
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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.