100 Escudos

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position in Portuguese colonial finance — it functioned simultaneously as a commercial bank and as the note-issuing authority for multiple overseas territories, meaning the same parent institution was printing currency for Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese India, and elsewhere at roughly the same time. This particular 100 Escudos belongs to the Angolan series, issued in the immediate aftermath of Portugal's postwar fiscal strain, when the escudo itself was under severe pressure from wartime debt and inflation.

Bradbury Wilkinson had been the BNU's preferred security printer for decades by this point, a relationship built on the firm's reputation for intaglio engraving that was difficult to counterfeit in colonial markets with limited detection infrastructure.