Month: December 2019

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Kenya, Uganda, & Tanzania 1975, Looking forward to FESTAC 77, to get Negritude going again

If we can just get free of colonialism the innate negritude can finally move us forward. Then colonialism ends and things only get worse. Maybe a Pan African festival open to Africans and the worldwide diaspora can bring back that hope once shared. 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.

Remember this stamp was designed by Africans to show their culture to other blacks. The head on the left is a reproduction of the ivory mask depicting Queen Mother Idia of the 16th Century Empire of Benin. This was to be the symbol of the festival. The right side picture might be a little disturbing to non African eyes. It shows Masai warriors bleeding a cow. This was not done to kill the cow but instead to drain blood. The Masai believe drinking fresh cow blood everyday or part of ceremonies is good for health, boosts the immune system, and is a good cure for hangovers. A group holds down the cow, the jugular vein is nicked and the blood is caught in a pot. When the pot is full the wound is caked over with mud and the cow lives on.

Todays stamp is issue A75, a 50 cent stamp issued by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania on November 3rd, 1975. The three countries were in their last year of a postal service union left over from British colonial days. The stamp imagines that the FESTAC festival was going to occur in January 1976 but there was another in a series of delays and the Festival did not happen till 1977. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

In colonial times there was a deep sense among African intellectuals that their achievements were being limited by the yoke of colonialism. When African country after country gained there freedom, there was a great sense of hope the was shared by the worldwide African diaspora. When the new countries instead declined due to their ineptitude their was a palpable sense of disappointment. A World Festival of Negro Arts was held in Dakar Senegal in 1966 to restore a sense of common purpose of Negritude as it was then referred. The Festival was not a success. Dakar was a giant ghetto and the Festival was embarrassingly paid for by France and UNESCO. Nigeria, with it’s oil wealth, was invited to hold the next one and pay for it themselves while hosting it in a newly built festival village that did not show old scars. The date was to be 1970.

The date repeatedly fell back all the way from 1970 to 1977 due to construction delays, the Nigerian Civil War, and government changes. During that time the name was modernized to Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, or FESTAC 77. A new village was constructed with 10,000 permanent homes, and a cultural theatre modeled on the Palace of Culture and Sports in Varna, Bulgaria. Over 2000 buses were imported to take the 16,000 participants to events that were cultural and intellectual. Participants came from Africa, the USA, Brazil, Guyana, and the Afro Caribbean. There was an opening ceremony that featured men walking on stilts and dancers with flaming urns on their heads. On the whole, the Festival was a success but the spirit did not sustain a rebirth of African momentum.

Homes built for FESTAC looking a little worse for wear today

There was one further Festival back in Dakar in 2010. The name was again updated to Word African Arts Festival. The theme was a hoped for African Renaissance. It was plagued by all the old 1966 problems and embarrassments. Funding was again by France and UNESCO.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast those that try to maintain progress. It will be my last. I don’t want a hangover and have to try a traditional African cure. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Central African Republic 1962, Having consumed human flesh, C.A.R. goes to the bugs

The Central African Republic has had a troubled history despite having large reserves of diamonds. Perhaps if they could better decide what was a felony and what was a misdemeanor. 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.

What do you say about the aesthetics of this stamp. Perhaps just that desperately poor countries shouldn’t do stamps showing bugs or rats.

Todays stamp is issue D1, a 50 Centimes postage due stamp issued by the Central African Republic on October 15th, 1962. It was a 12 stamp issue in various denominations showing various bugs. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether unused or canceled to order. I am going to need more evidence to believe it was really possible to send a postage due letter in the CAR.

The Central African Republic has suffered from troubled leadership since the move from being the French colony of Ubangi-Chari. The first leader Barthelemy Boganda was killed in a plane crash soon after independence. The surprise might be that be that a plane gets off the ground there rather than it crashes. Nevertheless, many in the CAR believe he was killed by his French wife who was estranged and had just took out a large insurance policy on him. I would need to see more evidence that an insurance company would be foolish enough to write a policy on a African independence leader.

In any case, leadership passed to cousin David Dacko. He had the idea to get his hands on the local diamond trade. He withdrew the concession given to a French company and decreed that any citizen could mine for diamonds. With Israeli help, he set up a diamond cutting operation in the capital where it would be taxed and then sent to Israel. Or course instead little of whatever diamonds are mined there go through that though they do end up in Israel. Thus CAR would stay desperately poor.

Capital Bangui showing the handsome square and obvious diamond wealth

Draco had transformed the system to a one party state and so change was only possible by coup. This happened in 1966 with Coronel Bokassa now in charge. He promoted himself to General, than Field Marshall, of a 500 man Army, and finally to Emperor Bokassa I. This may sound ridiculous but isn’t it de facto what all these President for life guys do. In any case new crimes or at least misdemeanors were being committed. One of Bokassa’s most notorious crimes was when school children were protesting a school uniform policy when Bokassa’s Rolls Royce passed by. They threw rocks at it claiming the school uniform company was owned by one of Bokassa’s wives. Bokassa’s car stopped and he had 120 of the school children arrested. He followed them to the local jail where he berated them for their insolence. Rivals then claim he began breaking their skulls with his sold ivory walking stick. He then supposedly had there remains taken to the Palace where they could be frozen for later eating. Soon the French backed a coup which restored the “Republic” and put Dacko back in charge and the Emperor Bokassa in exile. He lasted 2 years this time before the next General’s coup.

Emperor Bokassa I. Don’t let him invite you to dinner

Bokassa attempted to return to CAR in 1986 and was arrested as he stepped off the plane and put on trial for treason murder and cannibalism. The French in 1957 had made the consumption of human flesh a misdemeanor. The trial was televised and watched throughout French speaking Africa. Bokassa hired French lawyers. Among the charges was that human flesh was fed to visiting foreign dignitaries including then French President D’Estaing. Bokassa was not afraid to offer a vigorous defense. At one point he stood up an shouted “All I hear is Bokassa, Bokassa, Bokassa, do you really think I am the only man in this country to commit murder?” A not totally off base defense. The Court convicted Bokassa but not of cannibalism. The General who replaced Dacko the second time in 1981 had offered an amnesty to all previous misdemeanor crimes from before he took over. The convictions for murder did not mean much either. His Death Sentence was commuted to jail time and that was amnestied. The people enjoyed his performance at trial.

Well if I ever am invited to the C.A.R,, I will definitely practice veganism. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting

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Malaysia 1969, The Tunku promotes a policy of racial unselfishness

The demographics of Malaya had changed a great deal under the British colonial period. No not British people, but people from India, Ceylon, and especially China had poured in and now were the majority of the economy if not the population. This makes proceeding toward independence difficult. Unless the Chinese could find a Malayan figurehead, a guy with local titles but had gone British. 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 was issued in honour of solidarity week. This was to promote unity among Malaysia’s ethnic communities. The portrait of Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman shows that it was really about politics with the Tunku’s party up for reelection and new Chinese parties threatening the old alliance.

Todays stamp is issue A22, a 15 cent stamp issued by the Federation of Malaysia on Febuary 8th, 1969. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

Abdul Rahman Putra al Haj was born in Kedah the seventh son among 45 children of the Sultan of Kedah. He married a Thai girl of Chinese ancestry and then was sent to Cambridge University. His studies went badly and even after hiring and moving in with him an English tutor he was unable to pass the bar exam. He did strike up a friendship with Violet Coulson an English girl who ran a coffee shop where many of the Malayan students took their meals. When his first wife died after the birth of his second child, Abdul wrote to Violet and she hired a manager for the coffee shop and left immediately for Singapore. Abdul was working as a civil servant and by now had the title of Tunku. She officially converted to Muslim and they married in a Mosque but it was many years before the Sultanate or the British administration recognized the interracial marriage.  Finding so little acceptance and finding Malayan women uncivilized, Violet spent most of her time with British official’s wives. This enhanced the Tunku’s career but angered him personally. Violet eventually went back to London without him.

What didn’t help Tunku’s career was the Japanese invasion. He stayed at his job under the Japanese but that came to an end at the end of the war. He went back to London to try one last time to pass the bar and to give Violet her divorce. Upon returning to Malaya, Tunku went into politics. He understood the British policy was to leave Malaya as soon as possible and they were going to turn it over to the political group that looked most likely to hold the country together with it’s different ethnic groups. Tunku realized that would have to be an alliance party supported by Chinese money but with a Malayan face, his face. He marketed this as a policy of racial unselfishness. He was appointed Prime Minister by the British in 1955 and stayed on after independence in 1957. A rival Chinese party under Harry Lee in Singapore threatened to lure Chinese away from Tunku’s Alliance Party and so Singapore was allowed to break away from Malaya. The country was renamed Malaysia to take into account the Asian ethnic groups that made up the new country. The Chinese minority gradually became dissatisfied with Tunku’s mismanagement and formed separate Chinese only political parties. Their success in the 1969 election made Tunku’s position unmanageable. The Alliance party decided if Tunku could no longer bring along the Chinese, what good was he. A more ethnically Malay Alliance Party forced Tunku to resign and promoted a more Malay First economic agenda. Malaysia greatly fell behind the economic progress of Chinese run but with a British based system Singapore.

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

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Quelimane 1913, Ceres has left the building

Quelimane is a port city in Mozambique that was founded by Arab traders of the Kilwa Sultanate. The town and trading post attracted Arabs, Indians, Swahili, Portuguese, and even Swiss. The trade was in tea and coconuts. Now it is a town forgotten by all those traders but has ever more residents. Who have nothing to trade. 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.

On this Portuguese colonial issue, the Roman God of Agriculture, Ceres beckons residents to take advantage of the ample harvest. Of course to harvest one must sow seeds. There is not point doing that when food is provided by international generosity. This town of 350,000 now lists hosting aid workers as it’s major industry. What happened to tea and coconuts? Well they claim you can still procure locally caught shrimp.

Todays stamp is issue A1, a 1/4 Centavo stamp issued by the Portuguese colony of Quelimane in 1914. This was a 16 stamp issue in various denominations. It was the only stamp issue for Quelimane as they reverted afterwards to colonial Mozambique issues. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $2.00 unused.

Quelimane was founded by Arab and Swahili trader during the Kilwa Sultanate. It was then principally a slave trading post. Vasco Da Gama first spotted it for Portugal in 1495 and found the Arabs and Africans there friendly. Quelimane is a Portuguese pronunciation of the Swahili word for cultivation. Kilwa was in decline by then and the Portuguese gradually had greater influence. Eventually they were able to block out the Arab traders by requiring that all trade in and out must travel on Portuguese ships.

The Portuguese eventually replaced the slave trade with agriculture. The area is tropical with ample rainfall. Large Tea Plantations were started, and Swiss planters arrived to cultivate Sisal, a fiber useful for carpet production. Locals could gather coconuts and sell them at the city marker.

In the 1970s, Quelimane was a fairlydiverse town of 75,000. Independence came in 1975 and the new government gave the million expatriate Portuguese in country 24 hours to get to the airport while carrying 25 Kilograms. 80% of the Portuguese followed the instruction. Here is a Potuguese video from the early 1970s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfQqygbyuoE&feature=channel_page

Today the town is a ruin. The Theatre no longer has a roof or screen and seating is on old tractor tires. The Cathedral built in 1787 is now filled with street kids the use the bell tower as a toilet. The church bells are long gone. The airport is down to one airline perhaps once a week who is banned from flying to Europe on safety grounds. The current mayor is English University educated and a former employee of Amnesty International. He believes if he could just convince citizens to pay their taxes due daily, he could turn things around. One thing that keeps growing is population, now up to 350,000. Diversity is no longer the cities strength.

Well my drink is empty, and this was a sad one so I may have another. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Burma 1949, U Nu tries to form a more perfect union

Burma did not want to stay British after the war. The Japanese occupation during the war meant it was not going to have to. It also wanted to stay Buddhist so was not going to join India. Could the politicians work together enough to form a more perfect Union? 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 from newly independent Burma shows the throne from pre British Burma. The problem there was that the Royals were not coming back. Instead politicians who had collaborated with the Japanese turned on them and put themselves under a anti fascist banner and jockeyed for position. How do you put that on a stamp? I think it would be fun to try.

Todays stamp is issue A19, a one Rupee stamp issued by the Union of Burma on January 4th, 1949. It was part of a 14 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

U Nu, then just U, went to college at the British founded University of Rangoon. There he met other young well off Burmese who were interested in ending British rule. The group was expelled from the University after they published a work called “Hell Hounds let Loose” making fun of the Rector. U’s work got more political but he also made a living translating English books to Burmese. Most were communist but one was Dale Carnegie’s work, “How to win friends and influence people”. U translated that title into How to take advantage of man by man. Born politician right.

During the war, the Japanese occupied Burma and gave it independence. U served as the puppet government’s Foreign Minister. When the tide turned against the Japanese the independence leaders abandoned them and united under the banner of the anti-fascist peoples freedom league and went to British held territory. The prewar British Governor came back and put them on a commission to work on independence. When the Governor changed the police and civil service went on strike to hurry along the process. The British were anxious to get out as well and a deal for independence was signed by Ang Sang and British Prime Minister Atlee. Before the turnover could happen, Ang Sang was assassinated by a shut out rival. The last British Governor appointed U Prime Minister and quickly got out. U had taken the title of Thakin but that was an old fashioned title and so he replaced it with Nu.

U when he was Nu

The anti fascist league pretended to speak for a diverse group but many ethnic minorities and hard core communists formed armed resistance groups. U tried to hold on to power. His faction of the anti-fascist league was rebranded the clean anti fascist league. U was also faced with Nationalist Chinese forces that vacated to Burma after losing the Chinese Civil War. American support for these Chinese damaged relations with Burma.

All the fighting tired the Army of the politicians and there was a coup against U Nu. He first was held “for his safety” and then allowed to go into exile in London. From London in 1969 he declared that he was still Prime Minister of Burma. Well a British Governor had appointed him 20+ years before. In 1981 figuring U Nu was now U old, the military allowed U to return to Burma. where he taught religion at his old University. In 1989, he made them regret that by declaring that his 1969 London declaration still held and he was still Prime Minister. Even other regime opponents were laughing at him by then and the military confined him to his house until his death in 1996.

So what ever happened to the old Royals. The last King Thibaw was exiled to India in 1886. He embarrassingly was on his knees before the British and many of his subjects begging for his life upon leaving. The British paid him a pension in India but that ended with his generation. One of his granddaughters was found in India in 1995. She was poor, married to a mechanic and didn’t speak Burmese or practice Buddhism. She did have a poster up in her home that showed her mother as a child in the Palace. A brother was more successful. He moved back to Burma and lived a quiet non political life as a merchant. He did take care to marry his first cousin to keep the Royal blood line pure. In his nineties in 2007, he came out of the closet by appearing in a local documentary titled “We were Kings”. He died this year but there is a male heir. In case Burma tires of U old and his clean league and is ready for a U Turn.

Well my drink is empty and I will patiently await tomorrow when there were be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Bahrain 1966, the new Sheik tries to get along without Charles Belgrave

The island of Bahrain has a long history and was the ancient home of the Dilmun Empire. However over the years the trading post attracted the attention of Assyrians, Persians, Omani, Ottomans, Egyptians, and even those farther afield like the Portuguese and the British. Through it all the Sheiks of the House of Khalifa have been able to stay by knowing who to befriend and who to oppose. 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.

So here we have new Sheik Isa bin Salman and the ever expanding Bahrain International Airport. Implicit in this stamp was that the Sheik was responsible for the airport. Well not exactly, but that might be too much to say aloud what everybody knows. The airport, the airline, the education and judicial systems and for that matter the discovery of the oil that paid for it all were the result of British advisor Charles Belgrave. No, there is no stamp for him.

Today stamp is issue A6, a 30 Fils stamp issued by the British Protectorate of Bahrain on January 1st, 1966. This stamp is the first issue of the independent postal authority of Bahrain and showed the new currency as the area had just given up the Indian Rupee. The road to independence is pretty clear on this stamp, but things were much more murky for Bahrain in 1966. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents used.

The native Dilmun Empire prospered in Bahrain around 1000BC and was an ally of Babylon. Later many nations passed through. The first Europeans that colonized the area were the Portuguese who built the fort there that still stands. A repeat foreign visitor is the Persians. In the early 18th century AD their Empire was weak after an attack by Afghans, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/09/06/iran-1950-a-new-young-shah-takes-credit-for-an-old-palace-in-former-capital-isfahan/     . This weakness was enough for the Sheiks of the House of Khalifa to establish themselves in Bahrain. The line of rulers aligned themselves over time with Ottomans, Omanis, and private traders of the British East India Company. The port on the trade routes began to expand beyond the pearl diving that had been the main activity. Indian and Persian trading families established for themselves long term operations.

In the early 1920s the British were concerned the area was being held back in development by the power of an elderly Khalifa Sheik. They convinced him to retire in favor of his son. The British also saw the need for a fairly permanent advisor to guide the new Sheik forward as foreign office types just past through without building relationships. The new Sheik agreed as long as the man recruited was an employee of his and not the British. The below ad was run in The Times of London seeking applicants.

“Wanted: Young gentleman, age 22 to 28, public school and/or university education, required for service in an Eastern State; good salary and prospects to suitable man, who must be physically fit; highest references; proficiency in languages an advantage. — Write, with full details, to Box S.501, The Times, E.C.4.”
The Times, 7 August 1925

Charles Belgrave was hired and accepted because the salary 720 pounds annually was enough to allow him to marry. Belgrave oversaw the construction of the airport  and expanded port facilities and put in place the beginnings of a both sex education system and a judiciary. He also supported the search for oil and Bahrain found theirs first in 1932. The was of course some push back against all of this by traditionalists who didn’t like change or Belgrave riding around the place wearing his pith helmut.

Starting in the 1950s a more leftist opposition was stoked by Egyptian President Nasser  who was a big supporter of Pan Arabism. Riots in 1956 specifically targeted for death Belgrave and the now aged Sheik. The riots were put down with either hundreds or five dead depending on who you believe. The Sheik tried to keep Belgrave around in a more behind the scenes role but he quit and returned to the UK. It was up then to new Sheik Isa bin Salman to guide Bahrain as the British faded.

The other Emirates were in the same boat and there was talk of joining the UAE, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/12/03/dubai-1971-coming-from-nowhere-to-be-a-tv-powerhouse/ . Into this, the Shah’s Iran also made a claim for Bahrain. Sheik Isa was able to convince the United Nations that the people of Bahrain would prefer to go it alone and become independent still under Sheik Isa adding the title Emir. There was no vote on this. Sheik Isa was still troubled by Islamists and leftists and he dissolved the Parliament in 1974. After that he ruled by Decree and his son continues that less than fine tradition today.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Charles Belgrave. People like him will never get the credit they deserve. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Germany 1944, National Labor Service now has work for the girls

America had “Rosie the Riveter” as a proto-feminist symbol of using the previously unutilized talents of American females in the war effort. Historians and stamp collectors may realize that Germans were there first, and the effort predated the war and even Hitler. 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,

Rosie in America had a distinct if unspoken lesbian vibe to her image. This RAD girl in Germany goes the other way with her Aryan master race looks. Nobody will think it proper to compare the two but perhaps both would have benefited from a dialing back of the politics.

A Rosie the Riveter image by Norman Rockwell from 1943

Todays stamp is issue B281, a 6+4 Pfennig semi postal stamp issued by Germany in June 1944. There were two stamps, one for the male and one for the female sections of the National Labor Service, the RAD. There was a third section of RAD for male Jewish laborers. That would have made an interesting Nazi stamp. but no such luck. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents unused.

The Weimar government of Germany formed a national voluntary labor service the FAD, in 1931. It was designed to combat unemployment by hiring for road construction and agricultural land improvement. It came out of the work of Friedrich Syrup. He was a Saxon in the post war labor ministry assigned to finding places in industry for former soldiers. Once he had risen to Labor Minister, FAD was the result. He was not a Nazi. However when Hitler came to power, it was greatly expanded and opened up to females in separate units. Syrup was put into direct charge reporting to Goring. The organization was renamed RAD and organized along more military lines. In 1938, the Jewish section was organized and mandated work from otherwise unemployed Jewish males. This would be cited as the later war crime.

RAD units, the male ones, were busy building the Atlantic wall in France and agricultural work in the Ukraine. The Ukraine work is also thought of as a war crime as it sought Ukraine food exports to Germany thereby perhaps starving the Ukraine. That charge mistakenly assumes it was the Soviet practice to leave Ukraine farm produce for Ukrainians. Syrup himself had a mental breakdown in 1941 that pretty much ended his involvement.

As the war went on and the tide turned against Germany, the male RAD units duties became more combat centered. First there were units that maned anti aircraft flak batteries. In the last 6 months of the war, RAD units were formed into 6 infantry formations that fought on both the Eastern and Western Front as infantry. Female units did not face this fate, but there is little information on their, or the Jewish RAD units, late war activities.

Fredrich Syrup was advised to flee Berlin at the end of the war. Instead he was taken by the Soviets to the former concentration camp(well maybe not so former but under new management) in Sachsenhausen where he died in August 1945 at age 63.

Friedrich Syrup during his days at the Weimar Labor Ministry

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast all those who are free to benefit personally from their labor. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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France 1938, remembering Clement Ader for his steam powered bat planes

One of the great things about stamps is that they allow a country to show off interesting things that are going on there. Advanced countries possessed inventors changing the world and imagining the future. Here we have the story of Frenchman Clement Ader and his pre Wright brothers steam powered bat planes. 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 printers and engravers did a good job with this issue. The blue color tint gives Ader’s Avion III plane a more serious look. The reality was that the bat shaped wings were mostly beige linen stretched over a thin wood frame. Lite weight being so important to getting off the ground. By 1938 there were many types of airplanes, the stamp does well in showing how advanced the early work was and then still have room for the man behind it.

Todays stamp is issue A88, a 50 Franc stamp issued by France on June the 16th, 1938. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $65 dollars used. There is another version on thicker paper in a darker shade of blue that would up the value to $77.50.

Clement Ader was born in Toulouse France in 1841. Toulouse is the future home of Airbus. He trained in electrical engineering and his early work was in the recently invented by Alexander Graham Bell telephone. He was in charge of installing the first telephone network in Paris in 1880. He went on to design a headset that would allow an audience to listen to an opera being performed with stereo sound. Pretty advanced for the nineteenth century.

In the 1880s Ader turned his attention to trying to achieve  powered flight. For what the machine that gets off the ground might look like he carefully studied the shape of birds, specifically the bat. He designed a lightweight, 112 pound, steam powered 20 horsepower four cylinder engine powering a propeller. His plane the Ader Eole, got one foot off the ground for a distance of 160 feet. It was the first powered takeoff, but the flight itself was not under the control of the pilot Mr. Ader. Ader then attracted funding from the French Defense Ministry for a more developed effort. This plane, still bat shaped but much bigger with a 46 foot wingspan and 2 30 horsepower steam engines wan named the Avion III. This flew in 1897 but was blown off course by the wind. The government declared it a failure and pulled funding.

Ader’s Avion III in flight in 1897.

After a short stint building V8 powered race cars that did not find buyers, Ader continued to have influence on aviation. In 1910 he published a book imagining a future of aerial warfare. Among the imaginations were drawings of what an aircraft carrier might look like, with a large flat deck, ship functions from a small island, and aircraft elevators to take planes to the flight deck from the hanger deck below. The book was spotted by at American Naval Attaché in Paris and sent to America. where they influenced the design of the USS Langley, the first flush deck aircraft carrier.

Ader’s plane name Avion became the French word for air travel. Ader was also honored in his hometown where one of Airbus’s assembly lines was named for him.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Clement Ader. With the value of this stamp, I can readily afford another round. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Brazil 1956, JK promises 50 years of progress in 5, and kind of delivers

Brazil was run by a political and military elite from a few coastal cities. The political left saw the masses inland as a potential basis of support and a work around for those entrenched. In the 1950s a visionary leftist President Juscelino Kubitschek, JK, put into practice his gypsy heritage to design a new inland capital Brasilia. more in the image of the Brazil he imagined and where he could control who was there. 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 was a clever way to get yourself on a stamp. A stamp from your own country while in office makes you look like a dictator. Panama put out a series of stamps showing Western Hemisphere leaders at a Pan American conference in Panama City. Why not pretend the conference was more than a debating society and have Brazil honor the important meeting and it’s gracious Panamanian hosts and their brilliant stamp designers. That way JK gets a stamp during his term. If not for this stamp, JK would have to wait for the new lefty government in 1986 to get another stamp, 10 years after his death.

Todays stamp is issue A373, a 3.30 Cruzeiro stamp issued by Brazil on October 12th 1956. It was a single stamp issue showing a Panama airmail issue of July 18th. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents unused. The original Panama stamp is worth 45 cents.

Juscelino Kubitchek, known politically and here as JK), was born into a middle class family in an inland diamond mining town. He was of gypsy heritage and managed to get training as a doctor with several years of travel in Europe thrown in. He was employed as a doctor with the military police but quickly transitioned into left wing politics serving in the Chamber of Deputies, Mayor and as a Governor.

In 1955, JK ran for President under the slogan 50 years of progress in 5. This played well to sensibilities that Brazil was always on the cusp of taking off but never quite getting there. JK offered a program of massive public works combined with opening up to foreign ownership of industry. The centerpiece of the strategy was moving the capital to a newly built city in the inland. The new apartment blocks for the bureaucrats and politicos would be owned by the state and therefore the government could control who moved there and therefore who would man the Bureaucracy. Bet President Trump wishes he had thought of that, but if he can’t build a wall, he couldn’t manage a new city. In his new capital scheme, JK partnered with acclaimed local architect Oscar Niemeyer. The architect was of the shaped concrete brutalist school, but spiced it up with voluptuous shapes he said were inspired by the curves of Brazil’s women and the universe of Einstein. Not bad for a ever soon to be up and coming country.

Brutalist Government apartments going up in Brasilia in 1959
Brazil’s National Congress in Brasilia

The really amazing part is that the new capital was partially ready and the capital indeed moved during JK’s five year term. 50 years in 5 delivered. There were also many new roads and much new industry. Plans for liberal progress in healthcare an education were left undone. Naturally the national debt skyrocketed and by the end of JK’s term, 80% GNP growth was accompanied by a 43% inflation rate. One of the keys to JK’s success was avoiding the military coup by having sympathetic leftist officers in the military purge potential coup plotters before he even took office.

There have been controversies since JK left office on how he achieved so much. Time magazine once listed JK as the seventh richest man in the world and of course that lead political rivals to assume he skimmed off the big construction projects. They also point to his lavish life in self imposed exile. When JK died, only modest means were found. Similarly leftists thought that JK and another former lefty President had been assassinated by the then right wing government in 1976 in a scheme called Operation Condor. The recently departed lefty government studied the claim and determined that JK had died in a car wreck, as reported at the time.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour 2 more to toast JK and his partner in architecture Oscar Niemeyer. Oscar had also gone into self imposed exile but the later 80s leftist government funded him to return to Brasilia and design a monument to his late friend. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Belgian Congo 1923, Showing off a non existent “Ubangi Man”

I like when a colony displays through it’s stamps the local culture. Therefore I was excited to study up on the Ubangi tribe upon spotting this stamp. Except there is no Ubangi tribe. Well maybe the name changed. A little south a tribe has gone from being called hottentots to bushmen to sen. No, the tribe doesn’t exist and never has. 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.

Belgium probably knew what tribes it was dealing with in their Congo colony. A hint into how this stamp happened may be the engravers note at the bottom. The American Bank Note Company. A farm out stamp, from the place the Ubangi myth began.

Todays stamp is issue A33, a 20 Centimes stamp issued by the Belgian Congo Colony in 1923. It was part of a 26 stamp issue in various denominations displaying the local culture, economy, and animals of the Congo. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents unused.

There is a tradition among some African women to have their lower lip pierced so then it can be stretched and an ornamental disc put in. This mainly happened among the Mursi tribe of Ethiopia. The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus imported a few of the women to the USA as part of their freak show of tall, short, and fat people. The circus wanted them to sound exotic. So after consulting an African map, they were named Ubangi. There is a river by that name.

Period Circus Poster
Modern Mursi woman with ornamental disc installed
Modern Mursi women showing the lower lip pierced and stretched but without disc installed. Notice also her earlobe

W. C. Fields later used the term in movies he wrote to refer to Africans. He liked to use terms unknown that sounded vaguely dirty to get around or at least lampoon the strict sexual censorship of the time. He also invented mother of pearl.

I mentioned that Ubangi really is a river. It also now refers to a group of languages mainly spoken in the Central African Republic. Yes here too, the name came from whites.

Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait till tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.