100 Piastres

The Banque de l'Indochine operated as a private commercial bank under French government concession — not a central bank in the strict sense — yet it held sole right of note issue across French Indochina from 1875 onward. That privileged position made its 100 Piastres notes an instrument of colonial economic control as much as a medium of exchange, particularly as the piastre's silver-linked value was repeatedly manipulated through the interwar decades to favor French commercial interests over local ones.

Marguerite Dreyfus, who signed her engraving work as "Rita," was among the very few women employed as intaglio engravers at the Banque de France atelier during this period. The fourteen-year print run across four distinct signature combinations reflects successive administrative changes at the bank's Paris directorate rather than any redesign of the note itself.