100 Escudos

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual constitutional position among colonial issuers — chartered in Lisbon but functioning as the note-issuing authority across Portugal's overseas territories, including Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Portuguese Guinea. This particular series circulated in Angola, where the wartime years had produced genuine inflationary pressure and a demand for higher-denomination paper that prewar issues hadn't anticipated.

Three distinct signature combinations appear across the P#97 series, reflecting successive changes in the bank's senior administration during the mid-1940s. Bradbury Wilkinson's intaglio work on colonial issues of this period was consistently fine, though the single watermark is the only mechanical security feature — light by contemporary European metropolitan standards.