THIS bronze token is one of more than 3,000 objects in the Worcester City Numismatic collection which includes coins, banknotes, and medals.
Made in Birmingham in around 1795, it bears the powerful image of an enslaved African man, bound in chains and pleading with the reader: ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’
When this token was made, Britain was a leading power in the transatlantic slave trade, transporting more than 32,000 enslaved people to America and the Caribbean each year.
This horrific trade was deeply controversial and by the late18th century thousands of people across Britain were campaigning for its abolition.