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500 Livres Tournois
| Issuer | Intendance Générale des Colonies |
|---|---|
| Year | 1788 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Livre Tournois (1721-1810) |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | ISLES DE FRANCE ET DE BOURBON. BILLET DE CINQ CENTS LIVRES TOURNOIS, QUI AURA COURS AUX ISLES DE FRANCE ET DE BOURBON, CONFORMEMENT A L'EDIT DU ROI, DU 10 JUIN 1788. CINQ CENTS LIVRES. INTENDANT GÉNÉRAL DES COLONIES. INTENDANT GÉNÉRAL DES FONDS DE LA MARINE & DES COLONIES. |
| Reverse description | Plain, unprinted reverse on salmon-pink paper stock, showing the natural texture of the handmade laid paper with no typeset or engraved design elements. |
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| Comments |
The Intendance Générale des Colonies issued colonial currency for the French Caribbean possessions — principally Saint-Domingue, Martinique, and Guadeloupe — under a system chronically short of specie. By 1788, the colonial financial administration was already under severe strain, and notes of this denomination circulated in an economy where plantation credit, slave-trade debt, and metropolitan merchant accounts were perpetually tangled. The livres tournois remained the official unit of account even as the French monetary system was moving toward the reforms that would produce the franc in 1795.
Pick 12 is poorly documented in terms of surviving populations, and the 1788 date places this note just one year before the revolutionary upheaval that would ultimately destroy the colonial financial order entirely.