500 Francs

Guadeloupe's franc-denominated notes of this period occupy an awkward political moment: the island remained under Vichy authority until mid-1943, meaning notes issued in 1942 circulated under a government that the Free French — and eventually the Allies — regarded as illegitimate. Whether this specific printing was ordered to sustain Vichy's administrative control or simply to meet routine liquidity demand is not cleanly documented, but the timing is uncomfortable.

E. A. Wright was a Philadelphia commercial engraver more associated with stock certificates and luxury stationery than sovereign currency — its banknote contracts were relatively few, and wartime logistics made transatlantic supply genuinely complicated.