1834 Medal BHM-1668 WM Abolition of Slavery N1 认证号45635755, PCGS号910692

This medallion was produced by Joseph Davis, but perhaps designed by Charles Fredrick Carter, a student of Halliday. A liberated slave stands over the instruments of coercion, raising his arms. To his left is the same broadleaf plant. The legend this time assures the English viewer of the gratitude of liberated Africa who will revere England, even before God: ‘England I Revere. God I Adore. Now I Am Free. MDCCCXXXIV.’ In the background, though, the primitive hut under the palm trees has been replaced with a windmill! In South Africa, under the Act slave ownership was abolish and replace by a transitional period of paid apprenticeships whereby freed slaves were to continue working for their past masters who were compensated by the Government for the imposed financial losses. A sum of 20,000 pounds sterling was allocated for this purpose. This medallion was a direct visual allusion to how abolition in South Africa was construed by many as a British political move against the Dutch colonists, one that would eventually lead to the Boer Wars with the breakaway Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic. Equating the symbol of the Dutch with the symbol of the ‘primitive’ Africans was a deliberate visual slur against the former. Moreover, the open, rugged landscape as imagined on this and similar medals through the inclusion of palm trees intersects directly with contemporary political discourse that justified colonization in Southern Africa though claims of ‘empty’ or ‘vacant’ land (McClendon 2010: 121), a rhetoric directly connected to ideas to colonial ideas of wilderness mentioned above.