100 Livres Tournois

The Intendance Générale des Colonies issued this note under the authority of the French crown to address chronic specie shortages in the Caribbean colonies — Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue all suffered from coins draining back to metropolitan France. Paper substitutes had been attempted since the card money experiments of the previous century, and this 1780 emission continued that uneasy tradition.

The livres tournois unit itself was already an anachronism by this date, abolished in metropolitan France by the Revolutionary reforms of 1795 — but colonial accounting clung to it well past its mainland death.