50 Mil Reis

The Banco da Bahia was one of several provincial banks chartered in Brazil during the 1850s liberalization of banking law under the Paraná cabinet — a short-lived experiment in decentralized credit that the central government in Rio would spend the following decade systematically unwinding. This note belongs to that window before federal consolidation made provincial bank issues politically untenable.

Intaglio on cotton stock for a regional Brazilian issue of this period almost certainly points to a London printer, most likely Perkins Bacon, who held the dominant position in South American bank note contracts at the time — though confirmation of that specific contract has not been conclusively documented for this series. The Banco da Bahia itself was absorbed into the broader reorganization of Brazilian banking following the 1860 Lei dos Entraves, which tightened reserve requirements and curtailed note-issuing privileges across the provincial banks.