1 Gourde

Haiti's 1916 paper issues came during the early years of the American occupation, which had begun in 1915 following the assassination of President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam and the subsequent landing of U.S. Marines. Financial administration of the Haitian state — including its currency — passed under heavy American influence almost immediately, which explains the ABNC contract. The New York printer had handled Haitian government work before the occupation, but the political circumstances after 1915 made these commissions something rather different from routine commercial printing.

P#137 is among the lower denominations of a series that circulated under genuinely difficult conditions: a country stripped of meaningful fiscal autonomy, its customs revenues controlled by a U.S.-appointed receiver until 1947.