Catalog
4 Tangas
| Issuer | Banco Nacional Ultramarino |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Printed in red-brown and green, the obverse centres on the green oval seal of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino against a bicolour ground with intricate guilloche underprint. The note is framed by ornate embroidered-style borders typical of early twentieth-century intaglio work. Text inscriptions in Portuguese identify the issuing branch at Nova Goa and the denomination, with the date of issue at lower centre. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | BANCO NACIONAL ULTRAMARINO 4 TANGAS (Translation: National Bank Overseas 4 Tangas) |
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| Comments |
The 4 Tangas denomination is itself a curiosity — the tanga was a fractional Portuguese colonial unit worth 60 réis, making this note equivalent to 240 réis, an awkward value that speaks directly to the chronic small-change shortages plaguing Portuguese Guinea in the mid-1910s. Emergency fractional paper of this kind was typically a stop-gap measure, issued when coin supply broke down under wartime shipping disruptions.
Bradbury Wilkinson's involvement guaranteed quality the colonial administration couldn't have sourced domestically, but London-printed colonial fractionals for Portuguese Africa from this period are genuinely scarce survivors — low face value meant heavy use, and few were preserved.