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100 Francs
| Issuer | Banque de l'Indochine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1939 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette of a helmeted allegorical female figure holding a laurel wreath, rendered in intaglio against a multicolour guilloche underprint. The base note is a Banque de l'Indochine 20 Piastres issue, overprinted in red letterpress with the denomination "CENT FRANCS" and the office designation "NOUMEA", while the original "VINGT PIASTRES" inscription is struck through in red. Engravers' signatures appear in the lower margin, with serial number and series letter positioned at lower left and lower right. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Central vignette of a helmeted allegorical female figure holding a wheat sheaf, set before a colonnade evoking Angkor Wat-style Khmer temple architecture, with seated lion sculptures flanking the base. The composition is overprinted in red letterpress with "CENT FRANCS" and "NOUMEA", superimposed on the original Indochinese multilingual text. Inscriptions in Chinese, Khmer, and Vietnamese appear in the surrounding panels, with the denomination numeral "100" at lower left. |
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| Comments |
The Banque de l'Indochine operated as a private colonial bank with note-issuing authority across French Indochina, French India, and several Pacific territories simultaneously — a remarkably broad mandate for a single institution. This 1939 issue came off the presses at Imprimerie Chaix in Paris just as the supply chain between France and its Southeast Asian colonies was becoming genuinely precarious, with wartime shipping disruptions soon making replacement stock difficult to move.
Marguerite Dreyfus, who signed her engraving work as "Rita," handled the reverse plate — one of the very few women credited by name on a colonial banknote of this period.