1000 Escudos

By 1970, Angola was deep into the colonial war that had begun in 1961, and the Banco de Angola — technically a private bank operating under Portuguese metropolitan oversight — continued issuing high-denomination notes backed by an economy increasingly distorted by military spending. The 1000 Escudos was a substantial sum in a territory where rural wages were minimal.

Thomas De La Rue's involvement was long-standing across Portuguese colonial currency, and this note sits within a series that remained in circulation through the 1974 Carnation Revolution and into the chaotic transition period before independence in November 1975, when the escudo was eventually replaced by the kwanza.