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10 Rupees Badulla; Oriental Bank Corporation
| Issuer | Oriental Bank Corporation |
|---|---|
| Year | 1881 |
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| Printer | Bradbury Wilkinson and Company, United Kingdom (1856-1990) |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio print on red underprint; allegorical enthroned female figure flanked by lions at left, bust of Mercury with caduceus at right, and the British royal coat of arms at upper centre. Text panels carry the promise-to-pay clause with bilingual Sinhala and Tamil legends below. Printer's imprint of Bradbury Wilkinson & Co. appears at lower margin. |
|---|---|
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| Protection type | Watermark |
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| Comments |
The Oriental Bank Corporation was one of the great overreaching colonial banks — chartered in London, operating across India, Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Far East, and catastrophically insolvent by 1884. This Badulla branch note from 1881 was issued just three years before the bank collapsed under the weight of bad loans tied to failing coffee plantations in Ceylon. The timing matters: the island's coffee industry was being annihilated by leaf rust fungus through exactly this period, and the OBC's Ceylon exposure was severe.
Badulla, deep in the Uva Province hill country, was coffee territory. Notes issued there would have circulated almost entirely within that agricultural economy.