Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
10 Francs Explorers of Africa - Sir Henry Morton Stanley
| Issuer | Banque Centrale du Congo |
|---|---|
| Year | 1999 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 10 Francs |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Latin |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse presents a finely engraved facing bust of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the Victorian-era explorer and journalist, wearing his characteristic pith helmet and a cravat, with a prominent moustache. An African landscape scene is rendered in low relief behind the portrait, featuring vegetation, a boat on water to the left, and mountain terrain to the right. The curved legend 'EXPLORERS OF AFRICA' arcs across the upper field, while the denomination '10 FRANCS' appears to the right of the portrait. The subject's name 'SIR HENRY MORTON STANLEY' is inscribed in a curved legend along the lower portion of the field. |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Log in to see details |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
Stanley's most famous expedition — the 1871 search for David Livingstone, financed by the New York Herald — made his reputation, but his later work in the Congo was far more consequential and far more brutal. His surveys of the Congo River basin in the late 1870s directly facilitated King Léopold II's annexation of the region as a personal possession, the Congo Free State, where the resulting rubber extraction regime killed an estimated 10 million people by some scholarly estimates.
That the post-Mobutu Banque Centrale du Congo issued a coin honoring Stanley in 1999 — just two years after the country shed the name Zaïre — reflects the complicated politics of numismatic revenue over historical reckoning.