200 Mil Réis Thesouro Nacional, 4th print

Perkins, Bacon & Petch — operating under the Perkins, Bacon name by the time this note was produced — had already built a reputation printing postage stamps and banknotes for colonial and emerging economies across the globe. Brazil turned to them repeatedly through the mid-nineteenth century, and this fourth print of the 200 Mil Réis represents one of the later commissions before Brazilian authorities began consolidating note production under tighter domestic oversight.

The 1867 date places this note in the thick of the Paraguayan War, the most costly armed conflict in South American history. Brazil's military expenditure was enormous, and the Thesouro Nacional was under sustained pressure to maintain liquidity. Notes of this denomination circulated alongside a crowded field of provincial and banking-house issues, competing for public confidence in a system already strained by wartime financing.