In the French region of Guiana there was a trading post on the coast at Cayenne and more famously a penal colony off shore on Devil’s Island. The French territory extended far inland though into an area named Inini after a river. Many years into the colony it was decided to make more use of the interior. Interesting what that effort looked like in this time frame. 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 displays a riverside scene, one assumes the French riverside, of the Moroni River that forms the border between French Guiana and Dutch Guyana,(now Suriname). Traveling the rivers was the only way to get into the jungle interior to make any sort of survey of what was possible there.
Todays stamp is issue A24, a one and a half Franc stamp issued by the French Overseas Department in Guiana on June 2nd, 1947. Becoming and overseas department ended the seperate administration of the interior. This was a 17 stamp issue in various denominations that mainly emphasized the interior. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 85 cents unused.
The interior of Guiana was very sparsely populated with only about 5000 residents in this time frame that were mostly indigenous. The French presence was miniscule with 7 French Army officers as administrators and nine military police. The administration consisted of three offices, forest management, water management and mines. An established gold mine was the only productivity beyond subsistence hunting, fishing, and farming. The French had the idea to open up the interior to colonization so they set up Inini as a separate colony and drew up plans for a road and railway into the interior. Anyone who has seen “Bridge on the River Kwai” knows what the Japanese did with a similar challenge in Burma. What would the French do in Inini/Guiana?
Well their effort was pretty similar. 535 Vietnamese prisoners of war from an uprising in French Indo China were brought in. Unlike the Japanese, guarding them was also outsourced. A unit Senegalese Trirailleurs from French West Africa were brought in to guard the Vietnamese. By 1936, the colonial Governor was expressing confidence that the railroad and road would soon be finished.
It was not to be. Cholera and intestinal parasites were plaguing the Vietnamese workers and they rebelled against the Senegalese guards at work camp Crique Anguille in 1937. The rebellion was put down but it was decided to abandon the construction project. It was decided to condemn the remaining Vietnamese prisoners to Devil’s Island. Some were held in custody until 1953.
In 1940, initially the colonies of Guiana sided with the Vichy Government after the fall of France. This became a difficult situation as Suriname was temporarily administered by the USA during the occupation of Holland and Brazil to the south declared war on the Axis in 1942. By this point the tiny French presence in Inini was concerned most with border control. In 1943 Inini changed allegiance to the Free French. In the 1944 Brazzaville Conference, it was promised that all citizens of French colonies would become French citizens and this was followed through in 1946 with all of Guiana including Inini becoming an overseas department of France. The interior has since been divided into communes for administration.
Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait till tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.