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Remember the divine duty of Empire

Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. We have an interesting story to tell of trying to hold on to an empire, and using a stamp to remind and convince of the divine duty inherent.

The stamp today is from Portugal. While the country is heavily Catholic, in the twentieth century there was a back and forth, with right of center governments revering the Church, and left of center governments persecuting the Church. One can easily see which period this is from with Saint Francis Xavier bathed in a warm glow and holding the Cross high over young boys.

The stamp today is issue A182, an one escudo stamp issued on December 23rd, 1952. The stamp displays Saint Francis Xavier. It is part of a four stamp issue in various denominations honoring the 400th anniversary of the death of Saint Francis Xavier. According to the Scott catalog, it is worth 25 cents cancelled.

Saint Francis Xavier was one of the founders of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. The King of Portugal had been worried about a collapse in the practice of Christianity among the Portuguese sent to the new colony of Goa in India. The Portuguese sent were mainly out of favor nobles and those from the lower classes. Many had taken up with local women and gone native. The King wrote to the Pope and requested missionaries be sent to the colonies to keep up the Christian faith among the colonists. Francis Xavier took up this challenge and preached the gospel far and wide in Portugal’s numerous outposts in Asia. It is said that Francis Xavier personally converted 30,000 people to Christianity from India to Japan. He went beyond colonists and attempted also to convert the native populations. His number of conversions was second only to the Apostle Paul and he was made a Saint posthumously.

This long ago history must have seemed very relevant to the right wing government of Portugal of the early fifties when this stamp was issued. Portugal was resisting the world wide trend of decolonizing and attempting to hold on to the remaining empire in Africa and Asia. This required expensive military deployments and conscription into the military. This was a big bone of contention with many young men emigrating from Portugal to avoid service. Once out of the country they were forming left wing political groups that were banned at home in Portugal. The Portuguese economy was growing though and there was the prospect of much oil wealth when the reserves in the colony of Angola were developed. The Portuguese Prime Minister Salazar also still believed it was the duty of the Portuguese to civilize and Chistianise  the native peoples of the colony. It does sound old fashioned and probably did in 1952 as well. It does explain this stamp and allows us to look at an earlier style of reverence so common in an earlier period of art but now almost entirely in the past.

The colonies were soon lost. The Indian army used force to take Goa in India in 1961. In 1974, there was a carnation coup by young left wing officers in Portugal that lead to immediate independence for Portugal’s African colonies and the formation of People’s Republics. A million Portuguese had to immediately return to Portugal where many found themselves destitute. Stability in Portugal was also undermined.

Well my drink is empty and so it is time to open up the conversation in the below comment section. Would it really have been possible to hold on to the colonies and allow the territories to develop gradually in a Christian environment? Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.