20 Escudos

Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position in Portuguese colonial finance — chartered in Lisbon but functioning as the note-issuing authority across multiple overseas territories simultaneously, including Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, and Portuguese Timor. This note belongs to the Mozambique series, where BNU held its monopoly on currency issue throughout the Estado Novo period. Bradbury, Wilkinson produced clean, technically accomplished work for numerous colonial issuers during the 1940s, and their intaglio printing for BNU was no exception.

The 1946 date places this issue in the immediate postwar period, when Portuguese Mozambique remained largely insulated from the economic disruptions that forced currency reforms elsewhere in southern Africa.