Catalog
100 Pesos
| Issuer | Banco Nacional de la República de Colombia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1900 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Black on orange underprint. A portrait vignette of a man appears at left, a condor vignette occupies the centre, and the Colombian Arms are displayed at right. The overall composition is rendered in a lithographic style typical of the period. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Printed in black and green, the reverse is dominated by a large central vignette rendered in fine lithographic engraving, illustrating the funeral of Inca ruler Atahualpa at Cajamarca on 29 August 1533, with a gathered crowd of Spanish soldiers, clergy, and mourners surrounding the catafalque. Guilloche-bordered numeral panels bearing "100" flank the scene at left and right, with a red oval stamp impression visible at the upper right. The printer's imprint appears at the base of the central vignette. |
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| Comments |
The Banco Nacional de la República de Colombia had a troubled existence from the start — its monopoly on note issuance, granted by the government in 1880, was persistently contested by private banks and eventually collapsed under the weight of the Thousand Days War (1899–1902), one of the most destructive civil conflicts in Colombian history. This 100 Pesos note falls squarely in that period of fiscal disintegration, when forced currency emissions and rampant inflation made large-denomination paper increasingly worthless in practice.
Printing by Litografía Nacional in Bogotá rather than a foreign security printer — Bradbury Wilkinson, American Bank Note — signals how far the government's financial credibility had slipped. Contracting abroad was no longer viable.