Month: April 2020

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Lebanon 1930, If you are going to cross the Dog with your army, please sign our guest book of stone

In the cradle of civilization, there are all these leftovers of old times. At the mouth of the Dog river in Lebanon, ancient armies left stone tablets to mark that they were there. The next army passing, seeing the old tablet, is then inspired to leave one of its own. There are now 17 plaques from the ancient Egyptians through to the modern state of Lebanon. 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 from the period of the League of Nations granted France a mandate to administer Lebanon. You issue a stamp like this of a historic site to suggest that you are acting as a good steward of the area. That was true, the stone tablets were not removed to be displayed in Paris in a museum or even worse as a rich guy’s trophy. In fact the French were inspired by them, leaving two new ones mentioning their being there and another to honor war dead, you know the price they paid for being there.

Todays stamp is issue A13, a 4 Piaster stamp issued by Lebanon in 1930. It was a 21 stamp issue in various denominations showing ancient sites around Lebanon. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.60 used.

The crossing of the Dog river at the site of the bridge is quite trecherous although the river if fordable during certain times the year. The troubled crossing probably inspired the leaving of the earliest stone tablet by King Ramses II of Egypt around 1200 BC. Ramses left three tablets recording his adventures in then Phoenicia. Around 600 BC came new tablets from Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II  and then 5 more from various Assyrian Kings.

Around 217 BC it was the Romans turn to make a mark under Emperor Caracella. He left more than a tablet he left the first version of the bridge shown on the stamp. Tablets under the Byzantines written in Greek also expand on the efforts made in roadwork and improving the bridge. Why not, if they don’t toot their own horn, who will?

Dog River Stone Tablet

No doubt the mandate period French were inspired especially by the tablet left by Napoleon III dating from his expedition there in 1860. Perhaps less so by the one left by the British in 1918 commemorating the work done by their Arab Legion ridding the place of the Ottomans. Lebanon itself left one in 1946 celebrating the leaving of foreign troops from a new independent Lebanon. Respectfully, neither Israel nor the PLO, nor the various peace keeping foreign legions traipsing through have felt the need to leave a permanent record in stone of their intrusions.

The bridge on the stamp has required several rebuildings since Roman times, most recently in 1809. The modern coastal highway of Lebanon uses a tunnel to cross the Dog river leaving the bridge and its old tablets to the tourists.

Well my drink and I will get the unusual bonus of pouring two more drinks for myself to toast the Romans for building the bridge and the Lebanese for allowing it to survive. Three drinks? gosh this is turning into quite a night. Hope nobody out there decides on a drinking toast game involving all 17 tablets. If you do, invite me. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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People’s Republic of Kampuchea 1984, Vietnam has things well in hand, relax and listen to some music

During the 1980s, Cambodia had two governments, the Pol Pot regime of Democratic Kampuchea was internationally recognized. On the ground and in the post offices though, Vietnam had conquered Cambodia. You might think after the genocide of Pol Pot, a Vietnamese takeover would be welcome. The USA and China were long tired of a militarily aggressive North Vietnam and Thailand surely did not want them on the border. 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.

Vietnam had farmed out their stamps to Cuba so most of the stamp issues of their client state were fairly generic topical stamps on animals or Mercedes automobiles or international meetings of no relevance to Cambodia. Occasionally though there was an issue like this showing traditional Khmer musical instruments. The Pol Pot regime did not bother with stamps at all between 1975 and 1980.

Todays stamp is issue A120, a 10 cent stamp issued by the occupying Peoples Republic of Kampuchea on October 10th, 1984. Cambodia was known as Kampuchea between 1970 and 1990. It was a 7 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents cancelled to order.

The Khmer Rouge had received help from North Vietnam during it’s long struggle against the pro western governments in Cambodia. After the last pro west government of Lon Nol fell in 1975, Pol Pot turned some of his attention to the government of North Vietnam. He believed it was their intent to turn Kampuchea into a client state. Members of the Khmer Rouge that had received training from Vietnam were purged. His military also became aggressive toward Vietnam. 24 hours after the fall of Saigon, Kampuchea attacked the island of Phu Quoc. All during Pol Pot’s regime there were numerous clashes with Vietnam. In this Kampuchea had Chinese support although officially all three countries were friendly.

In late 1978, Vietnam started their “Counteroffensive on the southwest border”. Vietnam invaded with over 150,000 soldiers and Kampuchea fought back with arms airlifted from China. Surprising both sides fought in a conventional set piece manner. Kampuchea fell in a few weeks and the Cambodians purged from the Khmer Rouge for their Vietnam ties assumed leadership in the new People’s Republic of Kampuchea. The world was just not having this. China fought a short unsuccessful war with Vietnam  and the Vietnam government was ostracized from all but the eastern bloc.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Vietnam had tired of the situation. Old Prince Sihanouk, see https://the-philatelist.com/2018/04/11/968-cambodia-the-human-rights-flame-burns-bright-at-least-on-the-stamp/ . came back to what was again the Cambodian Kingdom. There would be a coalition government with two Prime Ministers, one from the pro Vietnam party and one from the pro royalist. Left out was Pol Pot  who tried to reenergize his guerilla war. Instead he was captured and killed himself after a show trial and being sentenced to a long prison term.

The instrument on the stamp is a Sra Lai. You can hear one here, https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Sra+lai+musical+instrument&view=detail&mid=D86EFDB1DE8956744D89D86EFDB1DE8956744D89&FORM=VIRE    .

Well my drink is empty and I can see why the world in the 1980s just got tired of the area. Perhaps that was for the best allowing the Khmer people to work it out for themselves. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Togo 1916, in the first British shots of the war, Germany loses Togo

I often make the point of how important contact with the home country was to a colonial outpost in darkest Africa. I think that is why you see the home country Royal or in Germany’s case his yacht on the stamps. You hope they are remembering what you are up to so far from home. When Togo was attacked against pre war conventions, Germans made their stand not in the trading post of Lome but in the mountains at Kamina where there was a radio facility to call home. 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 starts as a French colony of Dahomey stamp showing an Ewe tribesman climbing a palm tree to extract palm oil and coconuts. This was the new industry after the colonials had banned the slave trade that the Ewe were a big part of. So this image makes sense whether we are talking about Ewe people in French Dahomey, German Togoland or the British Gold Coast. Europe than intrudes more with an Overprint announcing Togo was now under joint French and English occupation. Most of the military work against the Germans was British but notice the postal service became French.

Todays stamp is issue A5, a 15 Centimes stamp issued for use in Togo during the joint French and British occupation of the former German Togoland. It was a 17 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 70 cents.

The area of Togo was in the area of west Africa known as the slave or guinea coast. The Ewa and Ashanti would raid each other and capture slaves that they would sell on. In the 19th century Europeans tried to end this practice both by not buying and trying to bring the tribes under their control. First the coastal village of Lome was obtained by Germany and then at the Berlin Conference of 1885 German claims were recognized as extending inland. The European powers further agreed that their colonies in Africa would cooperate to control unruly natives, which all of the nations  realized as the biggest threat. There was a further provision of the treaty that if there was war in Europe, colonies in Africa would remain neutral.

Germany relied on this provision a great deal and their colonies were very lightly defended, This was to lower the cost in the hope that giving merchants more of a free hand could generate a profit from the colony. In fact there were no German Army units stationed in Togo just a few officers and 300 part time German reservists called polizetruppen. When word of World War I breaking out in Europe in 1914, the German Governor sent telegrams to his counterparts in neighboring French Dahomey and the British Gold Coast suggesting  neutrality as per the Berlin Conference of 1885. The British reply was a demand for German surrender and both France and Britain prepared to invade using their larger troop presence.

The German plan for defense was to immediately get their people out of Lome and withdraw inland along their railway toward Kamina in the mountains where the radio transmitters were that were the colonies connection to Germany. The British found Lome abandoned and on fire as the natives had begun the looting. The French had no military plan beyond Lome as they did not know about Kamina. The British force turned inland to pursue the Germans. During the pursuit an Askari soldier from the Gold Coast Regiment, Private Alhaji Grunshi fired the first British shot of World War I.

Later Sargent Major Alhaji Grunshi. The first British soldier to fire a shot in World War I. That got him a mention in dispatches from the front.

The German governor decided to send 300 men to  delay the British  when they tried to cross the Chra river. They successfully stopped the British though most of the Askari troops on both sides went awol  when the shooting started.  The German Governor had received word from Germany to give up after blowing bridges, rail cars, and the radio towers. No help was coming from Germany.  The Allied casualties were 123 and the Germans lost 41.

After the war German Togoland was divided into separate colonies of French and British Togo. Modern Togo is only the French part. British Togo voted to join the Gold Coast as it became the independent country of Ghana. In the 1970s, independent Dahomey renamed itself Benin.

Well my drink is empty and I wonder if it provoked any thought among African colonists of other nations when Germany decided to not mount a recovery force for their colonies. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Ireland 1956, the USA helps Ireland remember their role in the USA Continental Navy

The first ship’s captain in the rebellious American Continental Navy was an Irish Catholic. He chose the life of a sailor after his tenant farmer family had been forced from the land by British landowners. Well that might be a story now independent Ireland should be interested in. We will give the Irish a statue to tell the story. 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 statue on todays stamp was a gift of the USA to Commodore John Barry’s home county of Wexford in Ireland. The statue was delivered by a United States Navy destroyer. The Irish Naval Service has an annual John Berry day where they do a ceremonial laying of a wreath at the statue. Ireland was interested in the story. Ireland did another stamp for Barry in 2003 on the 200th anniversary of his death as part of an issue of Irish mariners who rose in other people’s navies.

Todays stamp is issue A31, a 3 Penny stamp issued by Ireland on September 16th, 1966. It was a two stamp issue coinciding with the American gift of the statue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

John Barry was born in 1745 in Tacumshane, Ireland. The family were tenant farmers under a British landowner. After being forced to leave the land for undisclosed reasons, the family moved to the port of Rossliare where an uncle operated a fishing boat. Future Commodore Barry started out as a cabin boy.

Relocated to Philadelphia in the American colonies, he received the first commission as a ships captain in the rebellion against the British. As you might expect, the American continental navy was not a proper navy  but pirate ships that raided shipping operating under letters of marquis issued by the Continental forces. One of his most successful  battles with the Royal Navy was the Battle of Turtle Gut inlet in 1776. A Royal Navy blockade ship was chasing a brig carrying a load of gunpowder. They forced the brig to run aground. Barry’s pirate ship crew was able to row to the shipwreck and recover most of the gunpowder. The then left an explosive charge with a delay fuse for when the British boarded the next day.

The British were impressed with Barry and offered him a bounty and ship’s command to change sides. Barry responded there were not enough pounds in the British Treasury or ships in the Royal Navy for him to abandon his adopted country.

Barry survived his many ship commands and in 1797 George Washington declared him America’s first Commodore, a title no longer used in the USA Navy. The statue in Ireland is not Barry’s only monument. There is a park named for him in Brooklyn and the navy has a destroyer named for him. It is the fourth USA Navy ship named for him and though it is getting older, commissioned in 1992, it recently received a midlife update and is equipped with the AEGIS missile system. There is also a sailor’s bar named for him in Muscat, Oman.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another and toast the US Navy for taking the time to tell Ireland a story they wanted to hear. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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West Germany, Airbus 320 a new Euro competitor to the aging 737

Here we have a German stamp celebrating new technology. Except now the technology was a multi country effort with origins in Great Britain. The resulting plane was no faster than what it proposed to replace. Not too promising you might say, but the designers were reading the zeitgeist correctly and the A320 family has the most orders of any jet airliner in history. 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.

There are two interesting things about the presentation of the A320 on this stamp. One is the date of issue, coming only 3 months after the plane received it’s certificate of airworthiness. Europe was littered with single country unsuccessful airplane designs at the time and they couldn’t have known yet how successful the A320 would become. It shows how dramatically important Europe viewed the program. The continent was spending a fortune importing Boeing airliners. Import substitution from a domestic could fix that. The second thing is including the flags of the Airbus consortium partners as equals. If things are presented that way enough times, people might believe.

Todays stamp is issue A635, a 60 Pfennig stamp issued by West Germany on May 5th, 1988. It was a two stamp issue in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used.

The 150 seat airliner market in the 1970s was dominated by the Boeing 737 and the Douglas DC9 that dated from the 1960s. I did a stamp on the DC9 here, https://the-philatelist.com/2020/01/02/turkey-1967-showing-off-the-new-douglas-dc-9/   . The French Caravelle, the British Trident and the British BAC 111 had been unsuccessful in the market. Airbus’s first airliner the A300 was larger though they had a short version the A310 they were not having much luck with, as it was too much plane for the job. British Aerospace, Fokker in Holland, Dornier in Germany, and Aerospatiale in France formed a consortium outside of Airbus to work on a design under British design chief, Derek Brown. Brown had worked previously on a proposed Hawker update of the old Trident airliner. The airliner they proposed was no faster that what it hoped to replace and the big advancements were in the areas of fuel efficiency and pilot workload. This later area was important to Europe as their air forces were smaller and so they were not throwing off as many veterans to serve as pilots. Civilian trained pilots had many fewer flight hours and so fly by wire technology was incorporated into the “Joint European Transport or JET”. Reducing what was expected of pilots was copied by Boeing, the American air force was later shrinking as well. The airliner layout was similar to the 737 but the interior managed to be 6 inches wider.

Airbus saw the program as a threat, but saw the hole in their product line so brought the program in house still under Mr. Brown. Germany sought and got a bigger share of the work including assembly in Hamburg. Britain got more of their people in all facets of the program so as a way to preserve a separate British ability to make airliners. I mentioned that the A320 program is one of the most successful in history but notice that none of the original consortium players still exist as separate entities. The design relied heavily on subsidies from the Airbus partner countries to be brought to market. I bet the tax payers did not realize that even as successful and long lasting as the A320 would not be enough to save any of the companies. To better position for worldwide demand for the A320, assembly can now be specified by the customer in Alabama in the USA or in Tianjin in China. Sometimes multinationals forget where they come from and even what their purpose was.

Both the 737 and the Airbus 320 continue to be developed. For Airbus that means more efficient engines called A320 neo, for new engine option. The old version was re-branded A320 ceo for current engine option. The equivalent 737 are the NG and the troubled MAX. Both manufacturers are limited by the basics of a very old now air frame design, but there is a lot of expertise that wouldn’t translate easily to a really new design. Plus who would pay?

Last year Airbus announced with some fanfare that the A320 family of airliners had passed the 737 in total orders. As of 2020, Boeing still leads in number built at 10,575 versus 9,313. We will see if the future order advantage translates into actual planes.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Derek Brown. I am sure he was proud of the A320 design but I wonder if he would have preferred it could have still been a Hawker and could have sustained a British aerospace industry. Hawker in the 1970s looked pretty viable also having the Harrier jump jet and the evergreen Hawk jet trainer. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

 

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Italy 1972, 100 years of the Alpini Corps

The modern Italian Army is not known for it’s military prowess. This is especially true of forces that Italy sent far beyond it’s borders. There was an idea however to recruit locals from the Italian Alps  who would be ready to defend the new territories in the north. The success of this can be seen in the fact that Italy retains all these gained territories. 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 a 100 year anniversary stamp, the stamp designers had the choice to show the Alpini Corps as people imagined it or how it then existed in cold war Italy. The modern troops just have a small extra insignia on their standard uniform, so we collectors are lucky the designers let us see the old Alpine style hats and pack mules so evocative of mountain combat.

Todays stamp is issue A573, a 25 Lira stamp issued by Italy on May 10th, 1972. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, all stamps in this set are worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

Prior to the coming together of Italy, the Alpine area was controlled by Austria. It was defended by a network of four large fortifications shaped to form a box shaped defense. This system was called the Quadrilatero and became much more vulnerable with the event of rifled cannons. The land passed to a united Italy in the 1860s. In 1872 A young Captain in the Italian Army wrote an article for a military journal that proposed the forming of an Alpine corps of soldiers recruited in the region to provide a defense of the new regions. The knowledge of the land would provide many advantages to mounting a successful defense. The article came to the attention of the King and was acted upon.

Quadrilatero Austrian forts to defend north Italy

The force was successful in that they were able to prevent a full breakthrough of Italy’s northern defenses when faced with Austrian attacks during World  War I. The fighting saw 114,000 casualties suffered by the Alpine Corps. That is a larger number then today’s entire Italian Army. World War II was less successful for the Alpine Corps. The units without a fight surrendered to the Germans when they took control of Northern Italy to continue the fight against the Allied invasion. One Alpine Corp unit, however that was stationed in Montenegro decided to change sides and keep fighting, this time along side Yugoslav partisans. The Germans were able to raise a new division of Italian Alpine troops that fought beside them to the end of the war. They mainly clashed with Brazil’s Expeditionary Force. That may reflect German opinion of their abilities or loyalty.

The force was imagined as defensive but has still been sent far and wide to Eritrea and Libya in Africa and even to China as part of Italy’s response to the Boxer Rebellion. More recently, units have fought in Afghanistan. None of these deployments turned out particularly well.

In today’s Italian Army, the units are still referred to as the Alpini Corps. However, the force is down to two brigades, which is only 2/3rds of one division. In World War Two, before all but one surrendered without a fight, Italy fielded 6 Alpine divisions.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast King Victor Emanuel I. The young captain, later General, I am sure could not have imagined the King would read his article and know a good idea when he read it. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Venezuela 1974, An ignorant people is a docile people

Venezuela was one of the many nations that broke off from Gran Columbia after independence from Spain. This breaking apart leaves small nations to try to piece together a cultural heritage as Venezuelans rather than Colombians of even Spaniards. So here we have an author from a period of history when less than 20% of the country could read. To promote him might distort a sadder legacy. 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 shows author Rufino Blanco Fombona standing in front of some of the books that he published. The portrait is worthy of a man of letters who rests in the National Pantheon of Venezuela. A nice positive image, but one that totally distorts the Venezuela of Blanco’s time.

Todays stamp is issue A212, a 10 Centimoes stamp issued by Venezuela on October 16th, 1974. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations honoring the birth century of Mr. Blanco. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

Rufino Blanco Fombona was born in Caracas in 1874. He published about 10 books of fiction in the first three decades of the 20th century. During the years he was active he was nominated five times for a Nobel Prize in Literature. The nominations got his books out on the wider world market that was unusual for a local literary figure of the time. He never won the award and the nominations shouldn’t be conflated to assume that Blanco’s work ranked among the worlds best. The nomination was often a sign of respect and support for someone trying to create literature in a desolate place. Blanco’s name is on an upscale primary school in todays Venezuela.

Education in the old days of Venezuela was spotty at best. The Spanish and the Columbians left little in the way of educational institutions and even their outposts were few and far between. Aside from outreach from the Catholic Church, little at all was done to educate indigenous people. Well off people were taught by tutors or at boarding schools. Simon Bolivar’s tutor is often elevated in order to imply levels of education that were not reality.

In 1881 school attendance was mandated by the government and a few schools were built. Oil was discovered in Venezuela in 1919 and oil revenue started to flow to the government. On purpose the money did not flow into education. Less than a third of eligible children attended school and the nations literacy rate was around 20 %. The long term dictator of the period, Juan Vincente Gomez openly stated his belief that an uneducated people were a docile people. Remember stability is supposed to be a selling point of a dictator. He may have had a point. An uprising in 1928 was lead by university students. Obviously members of the top two or three percent of their age cohort. The uprising was put down and the student leaders sent into exile. Lefties like to point out how rough Gomez could be with agitators in the use of murder and torture. Hanging men upside down  by their testicles till dead. Yet these students only got a probably well funded exile, a leap year. Well the rich are different, even to a dictator. Many of the exiled students came back to be leaders in Venezuela. There is debate how much of the early oil revenue was stolen by Gomez and how much by Wall Street. I imagine some was spent on leap years.

Student agitators from 1928. Notice the coat and ties to say I am better than you and the berets to say I hate you. I bet they would lose a vote on whether they should be hung upside down by their you know what.

Later governments got more democratic and oil revenue kept flowing so things eventually improved. There is a perception that the situation in Venezuela has deteriorated under the Socialists claudillos lately. One area that has continued to improve is literacy which is currently 96%. This is one of the highest in Latin America. They should perhaps do more stamps on people that made that happen and less made up stories from the countries dark age.

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