10 Livres

The Intendance Générale des Colonies issued this 10 Livres note during the period when metropolitan France was attempting to extend revolutionary monetary policy to its overseas territories — an experiment that worked poorly given the chronic shortage of hard currency already endemic to the colonial economy. These notes circulated across French Caribbean possessions at a moment when the assignat system was collapsing on the continent, and colonial confidence in paper money was, unsurprisingly, no better.

Survival rates are low. Colonial humidity, combined with the thin paper stocks typical of emergency colonial issues, means genuinely intact examples are rarely encountered.