5 Dollars - Charles Brooke

Sarawak's first paper currency was issued under Rajah Charles Brooke, the second White Rajah, who inherited the territory from his uncle James in 1868. The Government of Sarawak was a genuine personal rulership — not a colonial administration — and these notes were issued under Brooke's direct authority rather than through any British Crown mechanism. Perkins, Bacon & Co. had long experience printing security documents for remote and unusual issuers, and their London presses produced the entire early Sarawak note series.

The 1877 date places this squarely in the series' first year of issue, before the territory had established reliable banking infrastructure of its own.