These plantations wrecked so many places. Without slavery, they don’t work economically and without the plantations what are the people to do? 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.
Todays stamp of a cute dog and cat is a modern farm out stamp aimed at topical stamp collectors. It was sold as a souvenir sheet and the catalog does not even have a value of the stamp in the individual. I occasionally buy a bag of what is called kiloware stamps because I enjoy the sorting and a stamp like this will occasionally show up. The issue being a farm out it is nicely designed and printed but I would rather see more of the country and the country have more of a voice in how it is presented. The late colonial era stamps were better in actually showing the place. Independence saw a first issue of a local with a flag, then a token portrait of Lenin to show what road they were on, then the ever more unrelated to the place farmouts, The most recent in my catalog showing pandas.
Todays stamp is issue A182, a 1000 Dobras stamp issued by the Republic of Saint Thomas and Prince Island on August 12, 1995. It was a 2 souvenir sheet issue of dogs and cats with each sheet containing 9 individual stamps. The Scott catalog lists the value of the whole sheet at $45, with no values given for individual stamps. I am not much of a topical collector, but am shocked at the value the catalog quoted. Do topical collectors really pay that much for something like this? The value is the same whether mint or cancelled to order, or course virtually none were used in actual mail. The excess stock of the sheets was divided and put into kiloware collections. In theory, the individual stamp is worth $5, but that valuation is dubious.
Saint Thomas and Prince Island were found unoccupied by Portuguese explorers in the 15th century. These are two volcanic archipelagoes about 75 miles apart and about 225 miles off the west African coast. The early settlers were Portuguese settlers of mainly Jewish decent. They discovered that the volcanic soil was useful for cocoa cultivation and plantations were organized. The name Prince island, on the less populated island, refers to the duties that had to be paid personally to the Portuguese Crown for the ability to operate. Operations included bringing over many slaves to work the plantations from mainly what is now Angola. Slavery ended officially late in the Portuguese Empire in 1874, but workarounds continued with contract African laborers brought in with token pay but still forced to work with no rights. Even the token pay meant the economics of the plantation system declined and the Portuguese planters were no long getting rich out of the filthy endeavor.
The Government in Portugal went left wing in 1974 and the order of the day was to divest Portugal of it’s costly African colonies. These islands were turned over to Manuel Pinto da Costa, a Saint Thomas native who was trained in East Germany and had been in exile in Gabon. He ruled by decree for the first 15 years but since has stood for elections and won about half of them. He seized the plantations from the Portuguese most of whom fled. Instead of land reform, he attempted to continue their operation for the benefit of the state. Nobody will be surprised to learn that cocoa output collapsed and with it the ability to import all the necessities that have to be imported to small islands.
The islands have been getting by on food aid and borrowing money that they never pay back. There is the hope that oil will be discovered and/or that tourism will take off. They are now also facing rising sea levels that have begun flooding the roads built by the Portuguese that connect the island. So far only at high tide.
Well, my drink is empty and so I will open the conversation in the below comment section.One can see the depravity that these plantations wrought. Bringing in far more people than the island can support. It must be hard to keep hope alive. I wonder if a voluntary, paid resettlement of many back to Angola as part of decolonization would have lead to a better result for the island. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.