10 Centavos

The Compañia de Obras Públicas y Fomento del Perú was a French-backed infrastructure conglomerate granted sweeping concessions by the Peruvian government in the early 1870s, including control over the notoriously expensive guano-era railway projects. This note was part of a fiduciary emission the company was authorized to issue — an unusual arrangement that briefly put a private foreign-linked corporation in the business of circulating paper money in Peru.

The National Bank Note Company of New York printed the series. By 1876 Peru's public finances were collapsing under the weight of railroad debt, and the company's concessions would effectively unravel within a few years, accelerated by the War of the Pacific.