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Nyasaland 1937, Siding with the Maravi over the Achawa over who lives by the lake

The area of modern Malawi received many invasions from different tribes as it was on a lucrative trade routes. So the local Maravi faced attacks from the Achawa friends of Arab traders from the north and refugees from the Zulus from the South. The British sided with the Maravi but to them they were all just natives. It was only the missionairies that could figure it out or make it worse. 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 a common design type that was issued throughout the British Empire in celebration of the Coronation of George VI. Nyasaland was a Protectorate rather than a Colony but natives can be forgiven for wondering what a stamp like this has to do with them.

Todays stamp is issue CD302, a half penny stamp issued by the Protectorate of Nyasaland on May 12, 1937. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents unused.

The area of modern Malawi was once the Maravi Empire. The maravi people were mainly farmers of grains on the fertile land near Lake Nyassa and also had acquired skill in ironwork. Maravi means working with flame. Nyasa means lake in local language and the British took this name for the area. Pre Europeans, the area was on Arab trading routes for ivory and slaves heading to Zanzibar. The Arabs converted the Achawa African tribe to Islam and there were then many clashes with the Maravi. The first Europeans were Scottish missionaries that brought Christianity and the end of slavery. They found a ready market from the Maravi and much less from the Achawa. Thus the signing up as a British Protectorate. There was a hope that it would then be the maravi benefiting from the trade. It did not work out that way.

Slavery was abolished and white planters acquired great plantations of tea and corn. For workers, the plantations found that guest workers from Mozambique would work for much less than local workers while locals worked much less productively on less valuable land. The Christian missions were offering some schooling to natives and these newly educated found no place in the area. In 1915, Baptist educated John Chilembwe formed a political movement and an armed uprising against the British. He had an Achawa father and his mother was an enslaved to the Achawa Maravi. His rebellion was quickly put down and Chilembwe was killed. His movement, which had been modeled on the ANC in South Africa and inspired by John Brown in the USA continued and was eventually the group  to whom the area it was turned over to upon independence. The lake became of less importance and so Malawi became a modern pronunciation of Maravi.

John Chilembwe and missionary

The British were always a tiny minority in the area but the so were the self styled “New African Men” that were the products of the western educations given in charity. The Maravi agreed to Protectorate status from the British. A strong friend who could help a people being attacked from all sides. To then bypass the tribal system and turn over power to these created by themselves, New African men like Chilembwe, because they were the only natives they could relate to shows the British falling short as protectors. Independent Malawi had a 30+ year President for life that had previously spent 30 years abroad being educated.

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.

 

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Mexico 1942, Pachamama is here with us at the conference

In the 1910s, Mexico had a revolution that left it with a one party state of the political left, the PRI. This was of course a repudiation of remnants of Spain in favor of the indigenous who the PRI would better represent. Artists could get on board with that, and a flowering of muralists brought forth political work heavily influenced by modern European art trends. So this is how something as mundane as an agricultural conference gets it’s own mural of Pachamama in her birthday suit ready to deliver her bounty to worthy PRI party Mexicans. 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 seemed nuts when I first saw it. I knew Mexico was a center of modern art in the first half of the 20th century. So I was not surprised by the style of art, but connecting it with an agricultural conference was where it lost me. Mexico was trying to connect the traditions of the pre Spanish indigenous who believed the Earth was a universal mother, a Pachamama, that provided. Thus the connection to agriculture and no doubt a lesson in Mexican culture for the attendies from the north, who probably were just there to find what foodstuffs Mexico had to sell.

Todays stamp is issue A157, a two Centavo stamp issued by Mexico on July 1st, 1942. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations, three of which were airmail. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used.

According to Incas that recorded better the more widely held Latin American tradition, the land was considered the mother of life, the Pachamama. She was to be worshipped as it was through her that nature provided her bounty. Disruptions in that were related to her annoyance. On her Challa’s Tuesday holiday, food and candles were to be buried in her honor and priests would sacrifice llamas and guinea pigs to her. Pachamama had a husband/son called Inti that represented the sky. Their children were then sent to Earth to be the keepers of civilization. After the arrival of the Spanish and the addition of Catholic tradition, Pachamama became less vengeful and more in the image of the Virgin Mary. The Mexican muralist on this stamp was reverting away from that. Pachamama as depicted is a long way from virginity.

The modern art movement  in Mexico centered around muralists that painted murals on indigenous and class struggle subjects on public buildings in Mexico. The most famous of these was Diego Rivera. As it was being paid for by the PRI government, the subject matter was limited but the output attracted a wider following. This was especially true of left leaning Jewish art patrons of New York City. The patrons of New York paid better than the Mexican government so many of the mural artists eventually made their way there.

The lack of social and economic progress in Mexico eventually affected the muralists. In the 1950s, the rupture movement saw the output become less nationalistic and more dark and surrealist. The now deeply intrenched PRI party no longer identified with the output and stop supporting it.

Rupture era painting “Renacimiento”
I think it is a bull, but I had to look at the stamp a while to realize the landscape was a naked lady.

The USA has always done a lot of trading with Mexico but the buying mainly centers on manufactured goods and petroleum. Less than 10% are fruits and vegetables and tequila if you want to classify that as agricultural. Mexico buys from the USA corn, soybeans, and meat and agriculture is the one area with Mexico where there is a USA trade surplus.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the muralists of Mexico. Hope is fleeting and the pressure to go north and sell out was inevitable, but that initial spark of belief and creativity created something lasting. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Germany 1993, in the end, all of Germany decides to remember Herbert Frahm as Willy Brandt Statesman

The center right in Germany really had it in for the politician with the alias Willi Brandt. After all there was the exile, the fighting for Norway against Germans, the abandonment of all the lost land, the loose living, the strange payments coming from both the CIA and the Stasi. How could you choose him to be the leader of West Germany? Well he had JFK and the 68ers on his side. They reveled in his differences, after all they were themselves different, and they were the future. 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 year before this stamp, as part of the same series of stamps on deceased German statesman, Germany did a stamp honoring political rival Konrad Adenauer, Brandt was portrayed as a younger man with intelligent eyes. Adenauer is cast as old, dark, and bitter. This gets into the generational shift. Brandt was himself too old to be a 68er but like JFK had a youthfulness they could identify with. When the 1960s political rivals are then remembered in the 1990s, Adenauer naturally gets the short end, His people and manner are just gone.

Todays stamp is issue A803, a 1 DM stamp issued by Germany on November 10th 1993. It was a single stamp for Brandt, but there were many similar stamps for dead German statesman. No not East Germans, but they had many stamps in their time and place. Interestingly most of their guys resembled Adenauer more than Brandt. The uprisings of the late 60s arose from the left. However the decrepit old left leadership in the East were not the type to harness it. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 90 cents used.

Herbert Frahm was born in Lubeck to a single mother, a store cashier in 1913. He was raised by  his step grandparents. That does sound modern. From a young age he was an SPD party activist while working for a ships broker. With the Nazis coming into power, SPD activists were no longer welcome and Frahm invented the name Willi Brandt and went into exile in Norway. He worked as a journalist in Norway and kept contact with fellow SPD activists in Germany by posing as a Norwegian student under another alias and visiting. The Nazis in 1938 purged the roles of German citizens who left due to them including Frahm. Frahm then applied and received Norwegian citizenship under the Willy Brandt alias. He volunteered for service in the Norwegian army when Germany invaded and was captured and briefly a POW. Upon release he moved to neutral Sweden, At wars end he quickly went to Berlin employed as a Norwegian diplomat. Back in Germany, he rejoined the reformed SPD under the Willy Brandt name under which he reapplied and received German citizenship. He wrote for an SPD newspaper and quickly rose in politics. The occupying powers approved of him since he lacked Nazi connections. In 1950, the CIA paid him secretly 170,000DM which is now about 400,000 Euros.

He rose to be mayor of West Berlin and the head of the SPD party. When JFK became American President in 1961 he openly supported Brandt over aging long time Chancellor Adenauer. Brandt lost the election in 1961 but got a great deal of positive world publicity during the construction of the Berlin wall by the East in the early 1960s. As the administration of West Berlin was separate from West Germany, he changed his affiliation to a safe SPD seat in Rhineland to get into the Bundestag.

The SPD and Brandt finally had their day in 1969 with the first SPD government since 1930. Social spending increased while military draft terms shrank as one would expect of a left government. What was new was Ostpolitik, that sought closer relations with the East. A peace treaty was signed with Poland and the East German government was better recognized, To achieve this, Brandt gave up German claims to land that had been taken at the end of the war. This especially angered Germans who had been forced to move west from the end of war ethnic cleansing. In 1972, several members of his coalition thought he had gone too far on this and called a vote of no confidence. Most thought Brandt would lose but he won by three votes. It turned out the East German Stasi had paid a few Christian Democrats to vote for Brandt.

Speaking of Stasi there was a close aid of Brandt that turned out to be one. Gunter Guilliaume had crossed from East Germany in 1956 but was a Stasi plant. When this was discovered, Brandt resigned under pressure from more conservative factions of his own party. The Stasi came to realize what a blunder it was as Brandt was their friend. He remained in the Bundestag, and was a thorn in the side of the next SPD German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

Well my drink is empty so I will await the 10th, Monday, when it will be my birthday and of course there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

 

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Italy 1973, An Italian republic integrating with Europe remembers Mazzini, whose goal was an Italian Republic integrating with Europe

Leaders fall in and out of fashion. After Italy united as a Monarchy in the 1860s. Revolutionary leader Giuseppe Mazzini fell out of favor as the Italy he imagined was a Republic. He was too liberal for those in power but simultaneously too reactionary and religious for the new left. Fast forward 100 years though and he is exactly the type of anti Communist and also anti Monarchist and pro united Europe fellow to provide an historical basis for the current government. 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.

Mazzini has had more than a few Italian stamps. Most of them are like this one and don’t make him look very good. The best was the first one from 1921 that showed him as an old man. Less than 50 years after his death, he was perhaps still remembered as a man instead of a figure of history.

Todays stamp is issue A571, a 25 Lira stamp issued by Italy on March 10th, 1972. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations recognizing the death century of Giuseppe Mazzini, the Italian unification activist. According to the Scott catalog the stamp is worth 25 cents used. I am not alone in preferring the 1921 issue to the 1972 or the 2005 issue. The 1921 issue is worth $40, despite a 1/100th denomination.

Mazzini was born in Genoa in 1805 when it was part of the French Empire. He was from a well off family and studied the law. From an early age he was a believer in the unification of Italy. He formed a political movement called Young Italy. Cells of the movement were frequently rising up against various city states. As a result, Mazzini was often in exile and twice was even sentenced to death in absentia. In Switzerland he met fellow exiled nationalist from Germany, Poland, and Switzerland. He formed an international Young Europe group that then had subsidiaries of Young Italy, Young Germany. etc. He imagined republics based on Nationality that would then afterwards combine into a United States of Europe.

In the continent wide troubles of 1848-49, Mazzini had his chance. The Pope was forced to flee Rome and a Republic was declared. In charge was a triumpharate with Mazzini the senior figure. The Pope still had friends though not Mazzini who was religious but anti clerical. The French Army arrived three months into the Republic and Mazzini was again off to Switzerland and then on to London.

Though Mazzini was close to military independence leader Garbaldi, he was not in favor of the new united Italian Kingdom under the House of Savoy. He even attempted to start a new uprising against it in Sicily in 1870 and was briefly jailed. After dying he was celebrated by most. Independence leaders of all stripes had been reading his works for many years before the bitterness of his last years. The kind of government he wanted was finally put in place after the war in 1945. Since then Italy and Europe have made much progress, but I sense that Mazzini would have hoped the result would be more of a utopia.

Well my drink is empty and to me figures like Mazzini come up short, Like Sun Yat-sen in China he got famous traveling around complaining about the status quo, but when he was given the chance to rule, he was unable to produce any positive results. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Maluku Selatan after 1955, Fake stamp but interesting story

As might be expected after a long Dutch colonial period, not all Indonesians were Muslims. Some were Dutch Protestants and so perhaps understandably were nervous about independence from Holland. Being in the majority in a few islands in the South Moluccas, and feeling the Indonesians had reneged on the promise of a federal state with some autonomy, rebellious veterans of the Dutch colonial army declared the Republic of Maluku Selatan. Declaration does not make reality but soon enough an enterprising stamp dealer came calling. 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.

No post office, no legitimate stamp is an understandable philately rule. The first stamps of Maluku Selatan have the best arguments for legitimacy. They were just overprints of Dutch colonial issues from the brief period that the islands were not in Indonesian control. Being overprints proved the rebels were in the old Dutch colonial post offices. Were they still delivering mail?

There is not value or issue date for this stamp. Stamp dealer Henry Stolow had printed in Vienna circa 150 stamp issues under the name Maluku Selatan between 1955 and 1971.

There had been some Christian missionary work in the Dutch Indies. Many Christians were from the island of Ambon which was where the Dutch first landed in 1605. A good percentage of the males went on to serve in the Dutch colonial army. Being dark skinned, they were not held as POWs as ethnic Dutch were during the World War II Japanese occupation. The Indonesian independence movement received much of their organization during the Japanese occupation. Post war, the Maluku soldiers did not desire disbanding or transfer  to the new Indonesian Army. Claiming truthfully that the post independence Indonesian government was more centralized than what they had agreed to, several south Malluccan islands declared independence under President Christiian Soumokil. The capital was Ambon. 5 months after the declaration in 1950 the Indonesian army landed in Ambon. Guerilla resistance on the islands lasted till 1963. After fighting started the Dutch changed their tune and started offering transport to Holland for Christian Mallucans. A government of Maluku Selatan in exile set up in Holland that still exists. Christiian Sourmokil had remained behind to lead the guerilla fighters. He was eventually captured by Indonesia and executed in 1966.

From 1950, the government in exile issued a few new design postage stamps that were not recognized. In 1955 stamp dealer Henrey Stolow contracted with Vienna printers for printing stamps in the name of the Republic of Maluku Selatan. He was also working with several newly independent African nations and his authority was not questioned. Stolow was a Jew born in Riga, Latvia who started as a stamp dealer in Berlin in 1919. The Nazi regime of 1933 saw him move on to Brussels and then on to New York. In New York he bought the collections of several prominent philatelists for well publicized auctions. Among the prominent collections were Franklin Roosevelt, Cardinal Spellman, and deposed Kings Carol II of Romania and Farouk of Egypt. Normally the dealing in fake stamps is considered not reputable but it did not seem to effect Stolow’s career. He later returned to Germany and his operation continues still using his name 49 years after his death. It is currently  based in Munich. A nephew of Stolow is still active in New York.

Well my drink is empty and I will salute the Christian Missionary. When one sees the trouble caused for the small percentage of converts, one can understand why modern Christian organizations seem to concentrate solely on charity. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. I will have a legitimate stamp for you.

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Spain 1964, The Creator of the Peace, finds things not so peaceful

There are a lot of reasons not to like Franco, a claudillo who actually relished the term. Yet this stamp succinctly makes the case for him. He ended the bloody civil war and managed the not easy task of staying out of World War II. Franco understood the value of peace to the average citizen while his opponents constantly upsetting the peace through assassinations. Even in death, Franco cannot rest in peace. 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 is a little more elaborate than the bulk mail Franco issue of the time. 10 Pasetas was high valuation and so we get more colors, a subdued military uniform and his best political slogan presented as a truth. Of course that on a stamp during a politician’s lifetime is a pretty good indicator of a dictatorship.

Today stamp is issue A302, a 10 Pesetas stamp issued by Spain on April Fools Day 1964. It was a 14 stamp issue, this the only one with Franco, celebrating 25 years since the end of the Spanish Civil War. We are now past the 50th and 75th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, No stamps, don’t want to talk of Franco. Trump will have this trouble after he is gone. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 55 cents unused.

Peace has to be the greatest achievement of Franco. Right after the end of the Civil War ended in 1939 World War II started. After France fell in 1940 to Franco’s German friends, Hitler had his eye on Gibraltar the British colony controlling access to the Mediterranean. Operation Felix was formulated that would have seen 2 German Corps pass through Spain. The plan assumed a British response of landing in Portugal followed by a German invasion of Portugal from Spain. Napoleon all over again for the Iberian peninsula. Refusing Hitler could not have been easy but saved Spain.

Lets give Franco a little more of his due. Franco could always point to assassinations carried out by the Left that disturbed the peace. Remember the Spanish Civil War started not when the left won the 1936 election. Jose Calvo Sotelo was the leader of the Right in opposition. He was assassinated leaving a void for Franco to fill and galvanizing the right.

The next assassination to talk about was then Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973. He was attempting to return from Mass when his car, a Dodge 3700, was car bombed. Franco was fading by then  and the Prime Minister was running things day to day. An aside, as car buffs might guess from the name, a Dodge 3700 was a license made Dodge Dart with a slant 6 225 engine. A fairly modest vehicle for a Prime Minister!

Dodge 3700 by now defunct Barreiros. It does look bigger in a Spanish setting

The third disturbing of the peace happened only last year. After Franco won the Civil War he created a “Valley of the Fallen”, to honor the fallen of both sides. As the left doesn’t want to remember a war they lost, it became a center of remembrance for the right side of politics. Indeed Franco himself was laid to rest there. During left wing administrations the complex was usually closed. The current lefty government decided to go further and have Franco’s tomb desecrated and moved by government action. People are more peaceful now, but how could that not galvanize the political right in Spain.

Valley of the Fallen

Well my drink is empty and Franco is too much a mixed bag to toast. I am still thirsty though so perhaps a toast to 25 years of peace. The next 25. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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East Germany 1981, Rosa Luxemburg wants you to learn to learn to deliver the mail

I don’t think much training is needed to deliver the mail. Apparently it was big business in East Germany. Enough to invoke DDR’s favorite martyr Rosa Luxemburg in the cause. Little do these young apprentices know they will soon be merged and then privatized. Ms. Luxemburg would not approve. 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 is the only stamp I have seen from anywhere invoking the training of postal workers. They show multiple specialties and the involvement of various institutions. The East German Post had wider communication tasks including telegraphs and telexes. Made it seem like the future.

Todays stamp is issue A653, a 20 Pfennig stamp issued by East Germany on February 10th, 1981, your author’s twelfth birthday. It was a five stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish Jew who was the daughter of a lumber merchant in then(1871) Russian occupied Poland. She joined hard left movements in Poland but then had a break with them. They supported Polish independence from Russia and Germany while Rosa thought the more important thing was that Germany and Russia become communist. She went into exile in Switzerland where she earned a Phd and involved herself with the Socialist Internationale. She spoke German, Polish, Hebrew and Russian. She desired to be German though it was not her heritage to be part of Berlin’s hard left scene. She had a sham marriage to a German man to obtain German citizenship. She joined the left wing German SPD party and taught Marxism. When World War I broke out, the SPD rallied to the flag and supported the war effort. Rosa was distraught by this decision. She helped form a group of former SPD members who opposed the war called the Spartacus League. Spartacus had lead a slave uprising in Roman times. The League supported dodging the draft, not following orders once in the army and labor disruptions to fight the war effort. This type of activity was of course against the law and Rosa was jailed. It also lead to the charge from the other side of politics that the war effort had been “stabbed in the back” by leftist Jews.

Rosa was released in an amnesty at the end of the war. Rosa’s former student, Fredrich Ebert was the new President of Germany. By now though Rosa had completely broke with the SPD and desired Germany to be a Soviet Republic. At the beginning of 1919 she started a putsch to destroy capitalism. The SPD opposed this violence and controlled a remnant of the German Army called the Freikorps. This deployed in the streets to fight the revolution. Rosa Luxemburg was taken in the street. After a short questioning Rosa Luxemburg was shot and her body dumped in the Landwehr Canal. She was now a martyr of the left.

Rosa Luxemburg

Many years later, Rosa Luxemburg has been very controversial. The East Germans raised her high. Most of their leaders had also been part of the Internationale movement with long exiles outside Germany. On the other hand the official position of todays German government is that idolization of Rosa Luxemburg in a tradition of far left extremism. For example East German Post’s Rosa Luxemburg School of Engineering has lost her name and is now a telecommunication university. They have left standing the statue of Rosa Luxemburg visible on the stamp. Every year on the date of her death, the German left marches in a funeral parade for Rosa. The Freikorp officer that ordered the execution was taken into custody by the Soviets in the first days of the occupation of Berlin in 1945 and executed. He claimed to be following orders and had served jail time after the execution in 1919.

Well my drink is empty. Skirting Rosa, I will pour another drink to toast the young apprentices of German Post. I hope all the changes coming to the post were positive for you. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Trengganu 1910, No tribute is forthcoming, so sell it to the British

Malaya was divided into many small Sultanates like Trengganu, on the west coast. These Sultans required protection from bigger powers so paid the bigger power a tribute. Until they fell behind on their payments. 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 the first stamp issue from Trengganu. Before the same Sultan we see was sending his tributes to King Rama of Siam. Or at least, I owe yous. It was the British great innovation to pay the Sultans to shut up and stay out of the way. A system Malaysia has continued.

Todays stamp is issue A1, a 1 Cent stamp issued by the Malayan Sultanate in 1910. This was a 19 stamp issue in various denominations featuring Sultan Zenalabidin. They say his name differently now. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $2.10 unused.

Trengganu lies on the trade routes so the local Malayans had contact very early on with both Chinese and Arab traders. According  to the Sultan, the name comes from when rich hunters from Pahang found a strange fang who they could not identify the animal from which it belonged. So the place was called the land of the fang of something. Chinese traders were a little rougher with their name. They called it the place where children are born who will be slaves. It was the first area of Malaya to become Muslim. In the 19th Century the same line of Sultans as Zenalabidin paid tribute to the Kingdom of Besut Darul Iman. That Empire was not able to cope with the level of piracy that afflicted the neighboring trade routes. As a result, Trengganu transferred it’s allegiance to King Rama of Siam. Zenalabidin took Basut with him with their Kings going into exile.

Siam was in a phase where it was attempting a modernization. They mostly had left the quite foreign Trengganu alone with it’s different language and religion. The Sultan was not prompt however with his annual tribute due to Siam. So when the British approached Siam King Rama about Trengganu,  he was willing to make a deal. In return for the Straights Settlements paying the debt owed  Siam and an additional loan and expertise to build railways in Siam, Terengganu passed to Britain. Zenalabidin was left in place and the British got along well with him. However when he died his sons failed to impress despite having had British educations. The first son Muhammed Shah II was forced to abdicate in favor of his little brother and the British then felt the need to install an official advisor. This then angered local religious leaders who fomented frequent uprisings. The Japanese occupation saw them try to give Trengganu back to Siam which was by now called Thailand. As the area was not Thai the change did not hold after the war.

Sultan Mohammad Shah II when he was Rajah Muda. Nobody seems to have found him impressive

Trengganu, they have since changed the English spelling, has become one of the most un diverse areas of modern Malaysia and is still heavily rural. Malaysia has a rotational system where the local Sultans become a ceremonial Monarch. When it was the current Sultan of Trengganu’s turn, his wife became the first Malaysian Queen to always wear a hijab.

Well my drink is empty and Trengganu would perhaps not approve of me having another. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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North Vietnam 1962, we have hitched our boat to someone going places

North Vietnam’s best argument during the then upcoming Vietnam war was that the conflict should be settled amongst the Vietnamese without outside influence. If you examine their stamps of the period, it was no secret that North Vietnam was a satellite of the Soviet Union. Bet the Soviets were glad they didn’t send troops. 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 was a worldwide excitement to the early space race somewhat akin to a dangerous sport. You had records falling and stories of careful training of individuals that are obviously among a countries best. With the USA and the USSR involved, there were even teams to rout for.

Todays stamp is issue A97, a 30 Xu stamp issued by the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Vietnam in December 28th. 1962. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations that honor the simultaneous flight of Soviet spacecraft Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 in August 1962. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used. The issue also exists in imperforate form, which raises the value 10 fold.

The Soviets were hard at work on the problems of putting men in space which of course had not been done before. One unknown issue was how the human body would react to extended time in weightlessness. To find out the Vostok 3 and 4 missions were scheduled. It would be the first time that two spacecraft would be in orbit at the same time. The idea was that the two ships would orbit together with their Cosmonauts life signs carefully monitored to see if there was any variation as to how the bodies coped. The missions were scheduled to last 4 days. The two spacecraft would also be able to communicate with each other by radio, a first.

The missions were successful with both Cosmonauts surviving well. The were a few hiccups. Vostok 4’s life support system malfunctioned sending the temperature in the capsule dropping precipitously. The radio contact with Vostok 4 was garbled with ground control misunderstanding Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich as giving the code word to get me home now. Thus his mission ended early.

Cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev, callsign Falcon, flew on Vostok 3 and later again on Soyuz 9. When he died in 2004 the breakup and disunity of modern Russia intruded. Nikolayev was a Chuvash, an ethnic group of Turks that live near the Volga river. Nikolayev’s daughter, a prominent Moscow Doctor, wanted her father buried in a heroes cemetery in Moscow. This was not allowed as the local Chuvash leader required that he be buried in his hometown where he no longer had family. Well he did die there, so it must have meant something to him.

Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, callsign Golden Eagle, flew on Vostok 4 and later again on Soyuz 14. He stayed on in the Soviet Air Force until 1993 rising to be a Major General. Popovitch was Ukrainian but the breaking apart did not effect him as directly. He was from the Crimea so ethnically Russian. He died in 2009.

Both of todays Cosmonauts had prominent wives. Nikolayev’s wife was Velentina Tereshkova, the first and youngest female to go to space.  Popovich’s wife was Marina Popovich, test pilot and the first Soviet woman to break the sound barrier, which she did in 1964. She was known affectionately as Madame Mig. She got some notoriety late in her life by writing a book called UFO Glasnost claiming the Soviet Air Force had many interactions with UFO and that the KGB guarded 5 UFO crash sites. Both marriages ended in divorce.

Well my drink is empty and I will join with our now North Vietnamese friends in toasting the Soviet Cosmonauts. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Gibraltar 2009, Why are they still talking about Anne Boleyn?

Gibraltar has been an important British Naval Base since the War of Spanish Succession. Gibraltar proved important in the Napoleonic wars, the Crimean War, and World War II. Britannia no longer rules the seas however and other formerly important bases such as Singapore and Malta were freely allowed to pass from Britain. Some times there is vote after vote and to their credit Britain respects the wishes of her subjects to remain so. 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 issue honoured the 500th anniversary of the Accession to the British Throne of King Henry VIII. Well not really. He only appears on one of the eight stamps. 6 of them are for his wives. It may be prove that those that put together farm out Commonwealth stamp issues are slightly more female than the hobby itself.

Todays stamp is issue A263, a 10 Pence stamp issued by the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar on January 10th, 2009. Henry’s Accession was in May of 1509. It was an eight stamp issue usually seen intact as a souvenir sheet. As with many such modern stamps not really intended for mailing, the catalog has no value listed for this stamp in the individual. So I will surmise that it is fair to assume that the a $16 sheet means that each of the individual stamps is worth $2. You will notice that my copy is unused. I suspect that excess inventory of such issues is sold off as individual kiloware to dealers. In the individual there might be less effect from this act on the value of the sheet.

Gibraltar is of course the stone hill at the southern tip of Spain. The southern tip of Gibraltar is only 8.9 miles from Morocco so it is an ideal spot to control entry into the Mediterranean Sea. It’s sense of separateness predated the British. After being conquered by the Spanish from the Moorish Emirate of Granada, it was sold to a group of Jews that had been forcibly converted to Christianity. The British soon landed there on the Austrian side of the War of Spanish Succession and the Treaty of Utrecht gave Gibraltar permanently to Britain in 1713. The conquest saw the removal of Spaniards from the place but they were not replaced by British settlers. Most instead came from Italy and Malta. Spain attempted several unsuccessful sieges of Gibraltar in the eighteenth century. During World War II, Germany had a plan to seize Gibraltar from Britain called Operation Felix. The plan required German troops to pass through neutral Spain however and Franco denied the Germans permission. The German force would have been quite large (2 Corps) as it contemplated an invasion of Portugal if the British response included landings in Portugal.

In the 1950s Franco began reasserting Spanish claims on Gibraltar. The British then started negotiations toward some sort of joint administration. Remember the people there are not Spanish and in 1967 a referendum was organized that overwhelmingly showed the peoples desire to remain British. In the early 2000s Britain was again reviewing the status of it’s remaining processions and began again talks with Spain over Gibraltar’s future. Again locals organized a referendum in 2002 and 98 percent voted to stay British. Less than 15 percent of the people are of British heritage.

Naturally the local employment derived from the British garrison has shrunk over time. This does not mean the place is struggling economically. The rock has become a hub of online gambling. In fact 40% of those employed on Gibraltar are Spaniards that reside over the border and commute. During earlier times the border with Spain was closed but Britain and Spain are now NATO and EU? allies.

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