These isolated colonies and their sugar cane plantations. Will we ever fully come to grips with what was done. 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 is not the Mauritius issue everyone lusts for. They got their first stamp early in 1847 with a pretty standard portrait of Queen Victoria printed locally. The printer however could not remember what he was supposed to say on one side and just wrote post office. These were very popular with 19th century stamp collectors and very valuable today. This stamp shows the typical transition to independence. This is a standard Commonwealth issue with Queen Elizabeth and the local sea life. Also available at the post office of the day were stamps with Lenin and Gandhi on them. So pick your politics with your stamp. Suspect the locals would have stuck with Gandhi. Perhaps not the creoles if today’s Ghana news about taking down his statue is an indication.
Todays stamp is issue A57, a 40 Cent stamp issued by newly independent Mauritius in 1969. It was an 18 stamp issue in various denominations showing the local sea life, in this case a sea slug. According to the Scott catalog, According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents mint. The Gandhi and Lenin stamp are worth even less, being for local use. They are interesting as both men are pictured as not easily recognized young students, Gandhi dressed as a young English swell in London.
Mauritius passed to Britain in the Napoleonic Wars. There was already a system of French planters of sugar cane using African slave labor. This system remained in place and the islands continued to mainly operate in French. When the British banned slavery, the freed Africans no longer desired to work the plantations. To keep them going, large numbers of contract Indians were brought in. These workers were known derogatorily as coolies by the left over French, Africans, and increasingly Creole as the groups intermixed. There really were not many British and there was little loyalty to them. A French speaking, British organized, Mauritius Regiment was sent to occupy but not fight in Madagascar during World War II and promptly mutinied. Over time more and more Indians came in until they were the majority. After the war, the British set up the process of independence as quickly as possible.
Even under British Rule, the French were favored in politics. Then toward independence a new left wing Indian party started to win elections and there has been much agitation since. Both parties are left wing, but they divide on racial lines.
The task of building a coherent country out of different peoples who don’t get along has proved difficult. Recently a Mauritian poet and essayist of mixed Creole and Hindu background named Khal Torabully has been promoting something called coolitude. He is trying to change the word coolie into something positive. He harkens back to the scary sea journeys taken by the Indian, European, and African ancestors as something that unites Mauritius. This fear of crossing the seas is common to African tradition as well as the Hindu taboo of kala pani, a fear of dark seas.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Mauritian poet Torabully. If he can get people to move past their racial and tribal identity he will have accomplished a great thing. With more and more of mixed identity, the need to move past will only grow. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.