Tag: Algeria stamp

Here we have happy even fez wearing kids in newly independent Algeria. It had been a long struggle to rid Algeria of the French, and the pillaging of the Blackfoot’s assets hadn’t gone so well. It was thus up to UNICEF to see that the kids would be okay. Algeria sought to be a leader in the post colonial non aligned movement. It must have a tough pill to swallow to so openly admit being a welfare queen. 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.

I do really like the honesty of this stamp. No the children really weren’t so happy. The unemployment rate in Algeria was 70% after independence. It follows that the local kids were desperate for whatever crumbs UNICEF was handing out. The honesty is that the country was openly admitting that it was up to UNICEF to solve the problem.

Todays stamp is issue A76, a 15 Centimes stamp issued by Algeria on December 13th, 1964. It was a single stamp issue celebrating a UN sponsored children’s day. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. Algeria was granted independence in 1962. Winning the pre independence vote, former Egypt exile and Nasser associate Ahmed Ben Bella was the new President. Algeria had been home to over a million colonists called Blackfoots because their feet were in Africa but their heart was in Europe. Some were French but there were also many Italians and Jews of Spanish heritage. Four days after independence, The European Quarters of Algerian cities were looted and the departing French Army did nothing to stop it. President Ben Bella declared European assets in Algeria abandoned and the property of the state. Soon there were almost no Europeans in Algeria and yet somehow it did not lead to instant prosperity. Perhaps this was due to Ben Bella’s  personal security.

Ahmed Ben Bella was born into a well off Algerian farming family. He was sent to France for University paid for of course by the French government. Ben Bella resented his teachers because he thought them racist against him. Perhaps his teachers wondered about having to teach someone on the dole who hated them while perspective French students were excluded. He further resented that the only career option without having to lower himself by going back to Algeria was enlisting in the French Army. Immediately after the war there were riots in Setif in Algeria that were put down by the French who were trying to reassert their authority. Ben Bella was incensed and made his way back to Algeria. Back home he was too good to work the family farm but also proved not very good when he was caught having robbed a bank in Oran. Escaping jail, he made his way to Egypt with a big pile. He there became a close associate of General Nasser. An on the lamb bank robber is perhaps not an obvious independence leader but Ben Bella created an elaborate back story of French persecution Among his tales while really living the good life in Cairo away from the actual struggle;

He claimed a package he didn’t recognize was delivered by taxi to his hotel and the taxi later exploded.

He claimed a shootout on the family farm that missed him.

He claimed that he was  shot and wounded in a Tripoli hotel while traveling under an assumed name and Pakistani diplomatic passport.

The passport didn’t work for him when he tried to return to Algeria with it and the French were waiting for his plane. So anxious to kill him they inexplicably released him to serve Nasser, I mean Algeria.

His Presidency did not go well as he attempted to follow the old African tradition of one man, one vote, once, followed by a by one party rule. The Defense Minister sensibly deposed Ben Bella in 1965 and put him in house arrest in a out of the way French villa. No doubt he resented the French for leaving behind a villa and not freeing him from it. When his house arrest was relaxed in 1980, Ben Bella moved to Switzerland to be close to his money. He was still using his Pakistani passport, to fool the French you understand.

Well my drink is empty and unless UNICEF wants to buy another round I will have to wait till when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

The 1830s through to the 1950s saw bloody large commitments of the French Army is a pretty desolate place as indicated by this stamp. Realistic pictures like this stamp before the colonization might have warded the French off. Even all the Barbary pirate stuff wasn’t making the Ottomans rich, yet somehow France believed they knew better. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill tour pipe, take your first sip of your Turkish coffee, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

There is a National Geographic style frankness to French colonial issues that I find refreshing. Printed in Paris but showing the exotic wonders of the world as offered by the French Empire. Young French stamp collectors of the day must have been very excited by such issues.

Todays stamp is issue A6, a one Centime stamp issued by the French colony of Algeria in 1936. The stamp shows travel by camel across the Sahara desert and was part of a 31 stamp issue over many years in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents unused.

Algeria began the 19th century as the Ottoman Regency of Algiers. A Jewish merchant in Algiers had supplied grain to the French Army  for which he claimed not to have been paid. This then made him unable to pay taxes he owed to Hussein Dey, the last Ottoman provincial ruler. Hussein Dey called in the French Council in order to work things out with the French. The Council did not pay immediately as was expected of him and in frustration Hussein Dey struck the French Council with his fly swatter. Outrage swept France and the French Navy began a blockade of the port of Algiers.

Three years to the day of the fly swatter incident, in 1830 France invaded and conquered Algeria. The fertile plain that immediately faced the Mediterranean attracted a lot of French colonists as well as some Maltese and Italians. Collectively the settlers became known as black feet, their feet being in Africa and their hearts remaining French. Local Arabs were pushed inland away from the best land and now unable to engage in piracy. The interior of the country was often in Arab rebellion. Napoleon III tried to placate the area by offering local Arabs and Jews French citizenship. Jews took him up on it but the Arabs mostly did not. If they did, French law would replace Sharia law and this was blasphemy. France had to maintain a large army deployment in Algeria and some believe this contributed to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

During World War II, many Algerian Arabs were willing to fight with Free French forces. The black feet colonists were more sympathetic with Vichy France. In France itself, this branded the black feet as right wingers and there was little sympathy in France post war for sending troops to maintain the black feet’s coastal enclaves. Algeria became independent and Arab. French and Jew had to make a quick exit to an unwelcoming France. See https://the-philatelist.com/2018/09/26/egypt-1965-arabs-unite-to-comemorate-the-burning-of-a-soon-to-be-arab-library-in-algiers/  .

Well my drink is empty and there seems to be no more Turkish coffee in Algeria either. Oh Well…. Come again  for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.

The period French would tell you they were dragged into the Magreb to be done with Barberry pirates. What they found and cataloged were remnants of previous civilizations dating to Pheonicians, Carthage, Berbers and especially Romans in Cherchell. 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 a statue of a bird resembling an eagle taking off with a male baby. The statue is from Roman times and is in the collection or the archeology museum in Cherchell. The best I can figure it relates to the ancient Hebrew Demoness Lilith, she has Greek, Roman, and Arabic equivalents. Lilith is thought to be the the first wife of Adam, who lost her first son. Her grief turns her into a flying demoness, who swoops in to steal male babies so she can suck their blood. In the Greek-Roman version Lamia, she can’t stop seeing her dead baby and Zues takes pity and gives her the ability to remove her eyes from their sockets.

Todays stamp is issue A35, a 15 Franc stamp issued by the then French colony of Algeria in 1954. It was a 6 stamp issue in various denominations showing Roman era statues in Cherchell, the one time capital of the Roman Mauretania Empire. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The Mauretania Empire was centered on Cherchell but extended west to the Atlantic ocean. It was occupied by Moors, Berbers, Jews, and Phonecians and was an important trading post in the western Mediterranian. Cherchell was well known for it’s high quality silver coins, but also exported grapes, fish, and furniture. It was also the sole source of a purple dye that was important to the adornments of Roman ceremonies. Mauritania had originally allied with Carthage but was soon annexed by Rome.

The man who became their great King Juba II was a Berber who travelled to Rome where he was educated and made a Roman citizen. Octavian crowned him King of Mauretania and he married Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of Cleopatra of Egypt and Marc Anthony. This was the golden era for Cherchell, then called Ceasaria. Trade grew, the arts and the study of history were renewed and the fortified city was reorganized into a Roman style grid plan. Juba II was a learned man who wrote books on history, geography, grammar. He also discovered through his doctor that the local succulent flower euphorbia was a powerful laxative.

Mauretania was eventually conquered by the Vandals and later the Visigoths. The areas importance greatly reduced. As Cherchell there was another boom as a completely French city with a large army presence. Over time Arabs entered seeking employment in the fields and the city but remained fiery but mostly peaceful during the 1950s Algerian war. The Europeans left in mass at the time of independence and again the city lost  importance. It still gets water from an expanded cistern system first put in by Juba II.

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

Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. 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. Today we talk about a leader who offered stability, which compared with what went before and afterward seems pretty good.

The stamp today is from Algeria from the late seventies when the post independence socialist pan Arab movements were maturing. A sign of that maturity is that the subject of the stamp, President Bourmedienne, had not appeared on a postage stamp prior to his death in 1978, despite being in charge since 1965.

The stamp today is issue A225, a 60 centimes stamp issued by Algeria on January 7th, 1979. It was a single stamp issue commemorating the death of long serving President Bourmedienne. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Houari Bourmedienne was born in simple circumstances to an Arab only speaking wheat farmer. That part is agreed to. There are alleged birth dates between 1927 -1932 and several possible villages where he might have come from. His birth name is nothing to do with his presidential name. He seems to have taken on a persona rather like a rap star or Joseph Stalin. Stalin really wasn’t a man of steel and Bourmedienne wasn’t really a modern embodiment of ancient heroes after whom his name was fashioned. In 1955 he joined the FLN that was involved in armed struggle against the French forces that were still the colonial power. He rose to the rank of Coronel, the highest rank in the force. The FLN eventually won independence from France.

Bourmedienne was named defence minister under the first independent Algerian President. Foreign owned lands were forcibly seized by the peasants that worked them and there was then the should have been expected drop in farm output. More troubling there was also a major purge with massacres of Algerians who were too closely associated with the old colonial forces or with rival independence groups. The murders even extended in large numbers to the immigrant Algerian community in France. There was also a failed “sand war” fought with neighboring newly independent Morocco.

In 1965, Bourmedienne acted and there was a bloodless coup where the former president was put under gradually less strict house arrest and Bourmedienne  led a council of military officers who were his close associates. He nationalized the oil industry and used the revenues to start a massive drive to industrialize the country. The population of the country was rising rapidly and only a tiny fraction of the land of Algeria  was arable. This seems a sensible policy, with people not able to be farmers and the oil industry providing revenue but few jobs. The challenge of the fast growing populations seems to be such a common theme in newly independent countries. This is probably why five year plans and state owned enterprises were so common. There were simply so many people that needed to be occupied productively. A fact seemed forgotten in the rush to laisse-faire in the 90s.

There was some success with GDP per capita rising to 30% of the USA by the end of President Bourmedienne’s life. This compares with 7.5 percent today. Algeria also became an important force in the nonaligned movement offering support to many African anti colonial forces, the PLO, and the ANC. Considering where he came from, where ever that was. It is a pretty impressive level of achievement. It is hard to imagine trying to handle yourself on the world stage with such a humble background and the responsibilities of finding things to do for such a big population. In his last year in office there was an election where he was elected president and over the course of his rule democratic institutions were gradually put in place. After instability  and an unsuccessful bout with  Islamists, one of Bourmedienne’s deputies was made President in 1999.  He still is in office today but is getting older so that some critics refer to him as “the living dead”.

Well my drink is empty and I would pour another to toaste President Bourmedienne but I don’t think that is appropriate with an Islamic leader. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting