50 Pesos

Colombia's finances in 1904 were in ruins following the Thousand Days War, which ended in November 1902 after killing an estimated 100,000 people and gutting the national treasury. Paper money had been printed in catastrophic quantities by both Liberal and Conservative factions during the conflict, leaving the peso essentially worthless by the armistice. Notes issued in this immediate postwar period were attempts to reestablish credible government currency rather than instruments of a functioning monetary system.

Waterlow & Sons brought the production quality that Bogotá could not supply domestically — the Colombian government had relied heavily on locally produced, poorly controlled emissions during the war years.