Monday, February 22, 2016

One from Every Country #14: Belgian Congo

Not every coin comes from happy circumstances. The Belgian Congo existed from 1908-1960, and had a poor track record of treating it's native inhabitants. That's a common occurrence in areas "colonized" by other nations. Since this is the first time it's come up, I will put it bluntly- terrible things happened when places that were already inhabited were colonized- the native peoples were abused at best, murdered at worst. This is not exclusive to Europeans by the way. The fight against colonization led to even more people, on both sides, being killed. A visicious cycle that is repeated many times in world history.

But even when there are bad things associated with a place and time in history...it's still part of history, and should not be forgotten. After all, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and any good historian knows that it is not their place to suppress, but to document, what came before.

This is my only coin from the Belgian Congo, nor do I have any coinage from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is what the country is known as today.

The hole in the center was part of the design. I don't generally care for holed coins, and while I will accept extremely low condition coins for my collection, I draw the line at holed examples...unless the hole was part of the original design. The crowned A on the back around the hole stands for King Albert I.

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