20 Dollars Mauritius Commercial Bank

The Mauritius Commercial Bank was founded in 1838 — the first commercial bank established in Mauritius — and this note dates from just its second year of operation. Private banknotes of this period from Indian Ocean colonial territories are genuinely rare; most circulated hard and were redeemed or destroyed as British imperial banking institutions gradually consolidated note-issuing authority on the island through the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Surviving 1839 MCB notes are among the earliest private paper money from sub-Saharan African colonial issuers in any major reference collection.