100 Mil Réis Banco Nacional do Brazil, 1st. Print

The Banco Nacional do Brazil was a private commercial bank chartered in 1889, almost immediately after the Proclamation of the Republic, and its note-issuing privileges were part of the chaotic liberalization of Brazilian banking that defined the early republican years. The government's decision to allow multiple private banks to issue currency fueled rampant speculation and contributed directly to the inflationary crisis known as the Encilhamento — one of the more spectacular monetary collapses in nineteenth-century Latin American history.

Waterlow & Sons printed this first issue in London before the bank had truly found its footing. The institution itself did not survive the decade.