50 Rupees

The Government of Mauritius issued paper currency directly — not through a colonial bank — for much of the nineteenth century, making these notes administratively distinct from contemporaneous British colonial issues elsewhere. The 1876 series came during a period when the island's sugar economy was under serious stress from falling world prices, and small-denomination government notes were essential for day-to-day commerce that coin supplies could not reliably support.

P#15 is among the rarest of the series. No intact circulated example is reliably documented in the major auction records, which suggests either destruction during periodic redemptions or extremely tight original issue numbers.