Tag: Sri lanka stamp

Since the time of Ptolemy and Marco Polo, the island nation of Sri lanka, it has gone through more than a few names, has been known for it’s fine jewelry and gemstones. So when Sri lanka decides on a stamp issue to show of traditional handicrafts, a jewelry box overflowing with jewels is a natural. 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. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp issue is a little dated and childlike. I have no doubt that the tourists bazaars of Colombo contain the cheap brass lamps, and child’s masks shown on the stamps. The country did however have a long tradition of jewelry of quality. Why then show this dime store stuff? Perhaps they understood that the tradition was more of the past than the present.

Todays stamp is issue A186, a 25 cent issue of Sri lanka on April 7th, 1977. This was a four stamp issue that was also available as a souvenir sheet. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused. That sounds consistent at least with the original denomination but it should be remembered that the current value of 25 Sri lankan cents is one tenth of one American cent. The souvenir sheet’s value is $3.70 used.

Ptolemy the Greek mathemitican, astronomer, and geographer way back in the second century AD recorded that beryl and sapphires were being actively mined on Sri lanka. Arab and Persian seafaring traders made frequent stops on the island which they called Serindib. Marco Polo, the Venetian Asia explorer also stopped there and noted the quality of the gems claiming the sapphires and amethysts were the best in the world. The gem mining was and is centered on the town of Ratnapura, which translates into city of gems.

In the local context, fine jewelry was associated with the old Kandi Empire that ruled the island till the early 19th century. There exists a Kandi aristocracy that can trace their roots back to the great families of Kandi. Brides wear elaborate jewelry that passed down from the earlier time. The marriages are then performed in the old way in the Royal Palace in the city of Kandi. A full bridal set will comprise 26 pieces of jewelry that cover the bride from head to waist.

In modern times the Sri lanka jewelry industry is facing some challenges. The gem markets of Ratnapura are now mostly staffed by people from Thailand. Recently there was also a large discovery of sapphires in the Ilakaka valley of Madagascar, and now much of what you find in the markets is sourced from there. Tourists in Ratnapura still have the opportunity to pan for gems in the areas old mines.

Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

I can imagine a young British stamp collector in 1938, for example my father, staring incredulously at this stamp. The King showing a peak at a colony on the other side of the globe where instead of Anglican Cathedrals there are palaces containing something as foreign as a Temple of the Tooth. Must have made him excited to serve the Empire and see the world. My fathers Empire service never got to Ceylon but he made it as far as Egypt, India, Iraq, and Burma. 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. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

I have a great deal of love for this style of stamp. A standard design, printed in England, with a room for an individual colony name. Then the window into the exotic colony. Maybe a bridge the British built, or the industry the colony takes part in, or even just a tourist style picture of an exotic landscape. Then there is this one. Buddhists believed that Buddha’s tooth relic conferred with it the right to rule. The Kandy Palace complex that housed the Tooth now also held the British Colonial Governor. Amazing!

Todays stamp is issue A54, a 25 Cent stamp issued by the Crown Colony of Ceylon in 1938. These stamps replaced an earlier issue with King George V. This design never made it Queen Elizabeth II as it did with other colonies as Ceylon got independence before then. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents used. Some experts believe George VI issues are a good place to be for the Empire collector as prices are still so reasonable. The same stamp from 1935 with George V is worth 5 times as much.

Buddha died in modern day India in 543 BC. He was cremated. A Tooth that survived the cremation was then presented to the local King for safekeeping. The King started the tradition of building a temple on the grounds of the palace to preserve it. Over a long period of time possession of the Tooth came to be seen as conferring the right to Rule. Around 300 AD the tooth was smuggled to the Kingdom of Kandy on the island that later became Ceylon and now is Sri Lanka. The practice of Buddhism was fading in the India of the day.

That does not mean Buddhists did not want to get control of the tooth. The native King of Burma offered a ransom to Portuguese adventures for the tooth. The Kingdom of Kandy then faced many attempts to capture the tooth and it had to be moved several times to retain procession. Portuguese attacks and attempts to conquer were eventually solved by the Kingdom affiliating with the Dutch. See https://the-philatelist.com/2018/02/22/the-british-require-a-duty-so-send-kandy/  .

With the Napoleonic wars in Europe, Dutch interests in Kandy passed to the British in exchange for Britain recognizing the Dutch takeover of Belgium. The British felt they needed to exert more direct control than the Dutch and after a few wars the Kingdom of Kandy became the colony of Ceylon. Surprisingly, the tooth was not shipped off to London to be a curiosity in a museum but stayed in its temple on the palace grounds with the palace now occupied by Sir John D’Oyly, the 1st Baronet of Kandy. You can probably guess that Sir John had somewhat gone native, he spoke Sinhalese and took up with local poet Gajaman Nona. She had come to him to appeal for aid after her husband died leaving her with many children. He granted her a Nindagama, a house and small farm. From then on her love poems were written for him.

Ceylon was granted independence in 1946. Great Britain had fought two World Wars where colonies like Ceylon were no shows, it was time for separation. The time as a British colony left now Sri Lanka with a large non Buddhist practicing Indian minority. So as with Kandy’s time with the Portuguese, the Temple of the Tooth has been attacked repeatedly by local Indians. Wonder if Sri Lanka will consider putting in a call to the Dutch Ambassador?

Well my drink is empty so I will patiently await tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Ceylon was heavily down the road to independence in 1935. Some may attribute this to recognition of natives peoples right to self determination, but I expect the money for Britain dried up. 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. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

These type of British Empire issues are just great. Stamps from all over showing exotic views and ancient sites with the Monarch, in this case George V, looking on benevolently. These were done into Elisabeth II’s Reign but the early ones are best. They are just a bit more realistic as to why the British were there. So in addition to the view of Colombo harbor and the Temple of the Tooth, we have Tamils picking tea and tapping a rubber tree on the plantation. Gone in the later similar George VI Ceylon issue. By then Great Britain was signaling it’s exit. In a post independence issue of 1954, the tea pickers and rubber trees were back. Independent Ceylon’s British trained, socialist leaders had high hopes that the plantations could again be profitable for the state, or at least for it’s socialist leaders. The British knew better.

Todays stamp is issue A47, a 2 cent issue by the self governing Crown Colony of Ceylon in 1935. It was part of an eleven stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 55 cents used.

Great Britain acquired Dutch trading posts in the then Buddhist kingdom of Kandy during the Napoleonic wars to prevent them falling into French hands. France had conquered the Netherlands at the time. There was then a series of wars that completed the conquest of Kandy. The British were interested in coffee plantations that could then export their product. To their credit, the locals refused to work the plantations and so Britain imported large numbers of Tamil contract labourers from nearby India. This forever changed the ethnic makeup of the island as the Indians practiced a different religion and spoke a different language. Coffee product wound down after a disease outbreak and was replaced by tea and rubber for export. There was rice cultivation for food but not enough and rice had to be imported. The British presence was not all bad as there was much work on education of locals and infrastructure building. At the height of the colony in the 1920s, seven percent of the gross national product returned to Britain in terms of remittances and payments to investors.

The 1930s worldwide depression hit hard on commodity prices and demand. Investors, as usual were first to pay the price. Great Britain had just been bled dry in World War I and had not failed to notice that areas of the Empire ethnically British had been willing to sacrifice far more for the cause than colonies of other ethnicities. That of course is natural but perhaps not what the British expected, who had often viewed the Empire with rose colored glasses. When combined with the drop off in return on the investment in Ceylon, it was time to fade out.

Unlike Spain and Portugal, who simply walked away from their empires when their governments changed in the 1970s, Britain tried to prepare Ceylon to go it alone. Administrators were sent for education at Oxford  to prepare them to administer the place. The universities trained them with a socialist philosophy  that wanted to replace British planters with state management but keep the plantation system in place. To have worked that would have required high prices and output and they of course would not have learned how to achieve that at Oxford. Even today though, the two rival parties in Sri Lanka are family run enterprises with decendants of those trained by the British. Of course they claim to be anti colonial, but still have bizarre amounts of contact with London. Great Britain of course no longer gets that 7 percent of the GNP, where it goes now is anyone’s guess.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the former Kingdom of Kandy. Left alone, they still might be what President Trump might describe as a shit hole, but at least they would have stayed their own shit hole. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The Dutch fall into Napoleon’s orbit so the island of Sri lanka changes forever. 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. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The stamp today is in fairly poor condition. That is excusable because it is not particularly valuable and over 130 years old. Being a duty rather than a postage stamp, there is a pen written date on it, probably when the duty owed was paid. The stamp serves as a receipt. If you think about it, that really is what a postage stamp is, proof that you paid to send the letter.

Being a duty stamp, the Scott catalog is not much help. They can be forgiven, it is already 6 phone books of stamps from anywhere, from any period. I understand that my dear readers might be wondering if such a thing as a duty stamp from the nineteenth century has a value. I was pretty sure it did. As I did in this other stamp like curiosity staring Queen Victoria,https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/27/queen-victoria-india-philatelic-definately-stamp-not-sure/, I reached out to Mr. Sandeep Jaiswal of stampsinc.com. He consulted his friend and colleague Kathy Johnson. They agreed that the value was circa $2 and even took the time to find similar stamps on ebay, https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ceylon-Victorian-Stamp-Duty-Revenue-collection-to-50c-WS6590/232545900218?hash=item3624d0d6ba:g:FpAAAOSwc6pZ-YpR. Thanks Sandeep and Kathy for your help.

The island that is present day Sri Lanka had a troubled 19th century. It was then home of the Empire of Kandy. It was a Buddhist Kingdom that had made peace with westerners and their trading posts. After an unpleasant experience with the Portuguese, who had attempted to convert the locals to Catholicism, see https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/10/remember-the-divine-duty-of-empire/. An agreement with Dutch was struck where they were allowed to trade, but did not interfere with the country. Around the turn of the 19th century, Holland fell to France then under Napoleon. Britain worried that  the Dutch trading posts would fall under Napoleon’s control. This would threaten British interests in nearby India. The British landed and took the Dutch trading posts without opposition.

Once established on the island the British began to lust for the rich farm land controlled by the Kandy empire. 3 wars were trumped up over the next 15 years that saw the Kandy Empire knuckle under to the British. The British then set up large tea and rubber plantations that made the white planters quite wealthy. They took the land from the locals by using a British law called the wasteland ordinance. The allowed the redistribution of land to those who would make more efficient use of it. It would be hard to argue that the new white plantations weren’t more economically efficient, but that does not help the local who had land and subsistence and now has neither.

In the long term the labour needs of the new plantations changed the islands forever. Large numbers of Tamil Indians were brought in to work the plantations. They were a different race, who practiced a different religion, and spoke a different language. They are still a sizeable minority on the island and there has been much strife between the races. A duty that modern Sri Lanka is still paying, not to Britain, but because of her.

Well my drink is empty. Instead of tea, I will have a Cola with lunch. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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 of foreign powers trying to influence post colonial Asia for good, they hope.

The stamp today was issued by an independent Ceylon. In 1970, they were still using the British colonial name. Today the island is known as Sri Lanka. The stamp recognizes Asia Productivity Year 1970. Similar stamps were issued by India, Pakistan, Taiwan, and the still colony of Hong Kong. There are some pretty diverse politics and ethnicities involved so to get them to agree is in itself an achievement.

The stamp is issue A146, a 60 cent stamp issued by Ceylon on June 17th, 1970. It was a single stamp issue and shows symbols of agriculture and industry along with the white circle with the upward arrow that was the symbol of the Asian Productivity Organization. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents used.

Ceylon had colonial periods with the Portuguese, the Dutch, and then the British. The interactions changed the island in ways that are still being dealt with today. The Portuguese, through Saint Francis Xavier, tried to convert the local population to Catholism, to the annoyance of local leaders. This lead to a deal with the Dutch to remove the Portuguese in exchange for Dutch trading posts. This lead to a class of Burghers, that were Dutch and mixed Dutch and played an important role in the commerce of the island. Lastly it was the British, who brought with them a large group of Indians to work on tea plantations. These numbers were so great that they were the majority in some rural areas. The Indians spoke a different language and were of a different religion. All this outside interference, done I believe unthinkingly rather than out of hostile intent left the newly independent locals with a difficult country to govern. I count three languages and also three alphabets on this stamp.

The Buddhist majority government tried to favor their language around the time of this stamp. This angered the Burghers and many of them fled the country, doing much to disrupt the economy. Many of those of Indian descent rebelled and a hot and cold civil war went on for many years. Eventually the majority Indian areas received some autonomy and the Indian army sent peace keepers to allow the area to feel secure.

The Asian Productivity Organization also has an interesting history. Formed by Japan with the help of USA foreign aid and the philanthropic Ford Foundation, it sought to help along economic, education, and eventually ecologic progress in Asia. It seems to offer an alternative to communism and to allow Japan to again take a wider, peaceful role in Asian affairs. The presence of Taiwan keeps mainland China out even as former communist countries have entered. This may be just as well as having China would perhaps mean throwing out Taiwan and ceding to China control. The organization still exists.

Well, my drink is empty and so it is time to open up the discussion in the below comment section. Getting vastly different countries to issue similar stamps seems a worthwhile token, similar to Olympic stamps. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.