1 Livre

The Banque de Syrie et du Liban was a French concessionary institution, and by 1942 the political situation around it had become genuinely complicated — the Free French had displaced Vichy authority in the Levant the previous year, and currency supply was suddenly a logistical problem. Printing this note in British Mandatory Palestine was the practical solution available, not an ideological one.

The Government Printer in Jerusalem handled several emergency currency jobs for Allied-aligned authorities during this period. For a French-chartered bank issuing notes denominated in Livres Syriennes, having them printed under British administration in Palestine is an arrangement that rarely gets a footnote but tells you a great deal about how thin the wartime supply chain actually ran.