New note I just got in the mail today... love the dragons on it, think they're cute! Printed for Armenia in 1919 by Waterlow and Sons, during the brief period of Armenian independence before they were incorporated into the Soviet Union. A lot of these never circulated and thus isn't especially rare in uncirculated condition.
Well by "just got it" I meant recently, not immediately before posting lol... it had arrived in the mail on Saturday which I hadn't checked until about 11pm when I got back to my apartment.
Troodon.... What does the small print say on the reverse?? Nice looking piece of Art ya got there! RickieB
That is a lovely note Troodon and who cares that it is not rare, just look at the engraving that went into it :kewl: Rickie the small print is most likely the printers name in English or Armenian/Russian
(to quote a famous 'valey girl'...) Like, I SO agree.. like... the overall design of the note is very cool! the dragons, the scroll work.. even the place for the serial numbers is artfuly presented. Nice pickup troodon!
The small print on the bottom border on both the front and back reads "Waterlow & Sons Limited, Londres, Angleterre" (London, England, in French.). It's the company that printed the banknote. Front of the note reads "Republic of Armenia, 50 rubles" in French, Armenian, and Russian. Why French? Not sure, presumably some of the owners of the company spoke French, or it was used because it was considered an international language of diplomacy (same reason most passports have text in French). The large script on the reverse is "Rubles" in Armenian superimposed over the number 50.
French was one of the main language at the Russian court just prior to this period annd a lot of corespondences were done in French
Yes, apparently if you happened to be in Russia + you don't know Russian and need to send mail out from Russia, you can write what you are sending in French instead of English. Found that quite interesting.
It was still a persistant stereotype during Impreial Russia that French was a more civilized and cultured language than Russian... Russian was fine for day to day business but anything official or educated should be conducted in French. Some poets and authors tried to fight that convention from time to time but it held pretty much until the Soviet Revolution. Probably as good an explanation as any though few Armenians had any more desire to be ruled by the Russians than by the Ottomans or anyone else. They wouldn't regain independence again until the Soviet Union broke up. So it seems odd that they'd bother to uphold the convention... Russian made sense in a way, as there were many Russian speaking people in or near Armenia at the time, but I'm not sure why they'd bother with the French unless it was just for the sake of European visitors or a preference by the banknote company. Maybe they wanted to appear cultured to the Russians and upheld the convention for that reason, I guess that's possible. Could just be possible that next to Armenian and Russian, French would be the next most unbderstood language in the region (though by that rationale Turkish would make as much sense, if not for justified political reasons not to want to have Turkish on their bills of course.) Anyone know for sure?
Well they woudnt have wanted Turkish on there notes as the Turks had a rather bad habit of trying to wipe them out
Thanks, Daggarjon. I really lke your site as well. I especially like the little historical blurb you give for each nation's currency.
