1958 Ghana 10-shillings

[villa66]

Ghana’s 1958 10-shilling, struck in .925 silver, 38mm in diameter and weighing 28.28g. High-value in the 7-member set of coins introduced by the new country in the year after its independence. Ghana’s new currency was modeled on the British pattern of pounds/shillings/pence, with the bottom six values in the new coinage intended for circulation.

This 1958 10-shilling, however, was coined in numbers far too small to be a circulation piece (c.11,000 seems to be a widely accepted mintage). So this is a piece of “Non-Circulating-Legal-Tender,” but there is NCLT, and then there is NCLT.

A new country should surely be entitled to a “statement” piece, big and impressively impractical, and here it is, Ghana’s sterling silver birth announcement. Its edge reads “INDEPENDENCE OF GHANA * 6 MARCH 1957 * “, and Kwame Nkrumah—key to the country’s successful struggle for its independence—is pictured and proclaimed (in upper-case Latin) “Leader of Ghana’s Citizens.”

But like so many of the new African states that would soon also regain their independence, Ghana did not immediately fulfill its early hopes. Less than a decade later Nkrumah would be deposed by Ghana’s military. Nor were several of the following decades much better.

But these days there is good reason—and sometimes one sees it so expressed, as on this 1958 10-shilling—to think that the “Black Star of Africa” is now truly on the rise.

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[KarlAntonMartini]

Funny, they used Latin for the inscription. Best regards, KarlAntonMartini

[villa66]

Funny, they used Latin for the inscription.

It is, isn't it? I don't think the usual (modern) answer obtains: that it's a way to dodge linguistic differences. There are indeed several coexisting languages in the country, but English is the official language (although, on reflection, I don't know whether that was true at independence).

What I think are better guesses are 1) Latin is a grander language for a presentation piece, or 2) British coin obverses deal in Latin, and so it might be mimicry of a parent culture, or 3) the exact opposite--a desire to show independence of a colonial master by avoiding its language, or maybe 4) which is a variation of "1)", in English, the construction "Leader of..." looks a bit buffoonish (on a coin, anyway).

But I don't know, of course.

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[Mynter]

Perhaps Latin was chosen to indicate that africans where equaly civilised than the evicted colonial masters. Latin , not English could also reflect the aspect of Panafricanism, which was a vision of Nkrumas policy. English could have had an exclusive effect on the frenchspeaking african nations.

[villa66]

...Latin , not English could also reflect the aspect of Panafricanism, which was a vision of Nkrumas policy. English could have had an exclusive effect on the frenchspeaking african nations.

I like this idea a lot. Very smart.

v.