CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image: Compagnie Impériale Chemins de Fer Éthiopiens Bond, 1899

Bearer bond with 48 coupons issued by the French government in 1899 to finance the construction of a railroad from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to the port of Djibouti in the French colony of Somali Coast. The project was a joint venture with the government of Emperor Menelik II (1844-1913), who did much to expand and modernize Ethiopia.

The Imperial Ethiopian Railway Company was formed in Paris in 1896, and work began on the railroad at Addis Ababa soon after. This bond reflects an increase of the capitalization of the company to 18 million francs in 1899. The construction of the railroad was complicated by difficult mountainous and desert terrain, and in 1904 construction ceased and the company was liquidated in 1907.

The elaborate engraving on the bond, by the illustrator L. Bombled, shows Menelik II inspecting the railway with his entourage and a caravan of camels.

The Springer Financial Documents Collection, 1717-1967, consists of 27 historical financial instruments, such as bonds, stock certificates, treasury notes, checks and a land patent, many bearing decorative engraved vignettes and associated with prominent events and persons in financial history. Some of the items include: a 1782 bond issued by France's King Louis XVI, secured by taxes on alcohol and salt, which were bitterly resented by the common people and contributed to the outbreak of the French Revolution; a 1795 certificate for stock in the Company of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, signed by the Company’s president, William Bingham; a bond issued by the government of Mexican Emperor Maximilian I in 1864; a bearer bond of the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama, which was organized in 1880 to build a sea-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama; a 1967 check signed by oil tycoon J. Paul Getty; a 1794 Pennsylvania land patent issued to William Bingham, signed by Governor Thomas Mifflin and assigned to William Morris (Mifflin and Morris both signed the Declaration of Independence); a 1777 Massachusetts treasury note, printed by Paul Revere and issued to finance the state's operations during the American Revolution; and an elaborately engraved 1758 certificate for stock in the Royal Trade Company of Barcelona.

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