Banknote Billet France 1 franc 1916

Remarks:

4 épinglages, plis et salissures

This banknote with a face value of 1 franc was issued by the Chambre de Commerce de Granville on 3 October 1916, in the midst of the First World War. It is part of the context of monetary shortage that affected France from 1914 onwards, a period during which metallic coins were disappearing from circulation due to hoarding and the growing needs of the war economy.

Faced with this situation, many French chambers of commerce were authorised to issue local emergency banknotes, intended to compensate for the lack of fiduciary and fractional currency. The Chambre de Commerce de Granville, a port town in the English Channel in Normandy, thus produced its own denominations to meet the needs of local commercial exchanges.

These emergency banknotes, also known as emergency paper currency or cash vouchers, had a circulation strictly limited to the geographical area covered by the issuing chamber of commerce. Their legitimacy rested on the commercial and institutional guarantee of the issuing chamber, which undertook to redeem these notes at their face value.

From a philatelic and numismatic point of view, this type of document is of definite historical interest, as it bears witness to France's economic and monetary adaptations in wartime. Banknotes issued by the chambers of commerce of that era are today sought after by collectors specialising in French emergency currency from the early 20th century.

The banknote explicitly mentions its date of issue, 3 October 1916, which allows it to be placed precisely in the chronology of issues from the Granville chamber of commerce, whose series were produced at different dates during the conflict.