2 Soles

The Banco Nacional del Perú was established in 1872 with significant backing from private Lima merchant capital, operating during a period when Peru's guano revenues were beginning their steep decline. This note predates the catastrophic War of the Pacific by several years, but the inflationary pressures and fiscal instability that would eventually trigger that conflict were already shaping monetary policy throughout the issue window.

ABNC produced the plates in New York — their standard arrangement for Latin American clients at the time, with engraving completed stateside before sheets were shipped for local authorization and signature. The Banco Nacional itself collapsed in 1877, making the four-year issue window short even by the standards of Peru's volatile nineteenth-century banking sector.