Tag: Dahomey stamp

A horse fantasia is a middle eastern tradition were a row of horseman in traditional regalia gallop for 700 feet and then fire old style muskets toward the heavens. If you are of the Bariba people of northern Dahomey/Benin, what a great way to remember when Persian King Kisra might have passed through. 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.

As practiced on this stamp, a fantasia might lose some of it’s magic. The row is only two and one is a woman, notice the closest is riding side saddle. Also the muskets are replaced by spears, so you will lose as well the heavenly directed booms at the end. The Bariba people  are divided between modern Nigeria and Benin/Dahomey and don’t have much political power, so perhaps this is a way to not let them get too full of themselves.

Todays stamp is issue A57, a 2 Franc stamp issued by independant Dahomey on August 24th, 1970. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. There are later overstampted versions showing the country’s later name Benin and currency devaluations.

There are several versions of the Kisra legend. One is that he was Persian King Kosrough who after being defeated in Egypt by the Byzantines around 600 AD was unable to return to Persia and so his army wondered west Africa. The other is that Kisra is a translation  of Christ who lead an army of Arabs against Mohammed and was defeated and his army wondered west Africa. Gosh even in their own legends, armies wondering west Africa are losers.

As Kisra’s army wondered, they attracted many Africans. He in turn would name them chiefs of their area. One of these was Sero who Kisra named King of the city if Nikki in modern Benin. He previously been his horse groom. Sero’s son, Sabi Simi took a wife from each of the five area Bariba people clans and through those wives created 5 Royal Dynasties that united the Bariba people. Stickler’s will note that the Kisra legend is unproven and it is currently thought that the Bariba people had arrived in the area from the east 600 years later than Kisra.

Nothing wrong with a good legend though and every year there is a Gaani Festival presided over by the would be Emperor of Nikki. There is a lot of dressing up and sacred trumpets and drums. Of course there is also a horse fantasia.

Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting

The French had governed their African spheres with large tribally diverse regions. Near the time of independence they were broken into much smaller entities. The hope was that the local politician could well represent his community and tribe while the broader area could still exist in a French community. It did not work out that way. 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 shows boxers at the last French Friendship Games in Dakar in 1963. When given a fair election in the last days of colony most of the countries including Dahomey chose more autonomy but still close association with France. Instead full independence came and aspects of a common French African community could not be sustained.

Todays stamp is issue A21, a 50 Centimes stamp issued by independent Dahomey on April 11th 1963. It was a six stamp issue celebrating the French African Friendship Games held that year for the last time in Dakar, Senegal. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

While Dahomey was a small country it had three distinct regions with peoples of the old African Kingdoms of Dahomey, Peorto Novo, and Aboney. France picked a politician Hubert Maga from the North and the Dahomey Kingdom ethnicity but had converted to Christianity as practiced in the South. He was the best hope to unite the factions and France pressed him to share with other groups in the government patronage. By now however French President De Galle had tired of the work of nation building in Africa. In 1959 Dahomey and most of the other French African states got full independence. President Maga quickly tried to consolidate power and create a one party state. The French cut assistance and many of the French keeping the infrastructure intact departed.

The Dahomey Army them forced Maga to resign and tried to have the three areas be represented on a council that included Maga. He then plotted to have the Army chief of staff killed. He was placed under house arrest but his former foreign minister Chabi Mama broke him out. He went on to serve in various short term versions or the Army tribal council. In the 1970s Dahomey found a stronger dictator for life and changed the name of the country to Benin after the Atlantic Ocean Bay off the coast. This was a way to paper over differences of heritage.

The French founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre De Coubertin proposed  separate African games back in 1923, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/02/07/1924-paris-olympics-the-last-of-the-modern-olympics-that-paid-homage-to-the-ancient-greeks/   . Olympics were thought of then as for the aristacracy so African colonials had no place. The French African colonies administration did not think the natives were capable and no games happened during colonial times. De Coubertan did convince De Galle however that African games were possible and France paid for the Friendship Games in the newly independant countries of French Africa. There were three games in Tarrative in 1960, in Abijan in 1961, and the Dakar games in 1963. 11 French African countries participated along with France. The new nations than asked that France invite English speaking African nations to future games. France withdrew support and there were no further Friendship Games. The name was late recycled for games held by the Eastern Bloc in 1984 that were boycoting the Los Angelas Olympics.

Well my drink is empty and the people of Dahomey/Benin must have felt they were taking as many blows as the boxers on the stamp. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The King of the old Dahomey would seem an odd person to celebrate for a Marxist dictator that had even changed the areas name in order to claim a fresh start. Mathieu Kerekou was all about starting anew though and that was how he stayed around from 1972-2006. Or maybe it was voodoo? Too bad none of his fresh starts was the way out of the misery. 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 really like this stamp for two reasons. One is showing the old African leader King Behanzin as part of the continuum of Benin/Dahomey  history.  The second thing is that it is not some elaborate fake looking stamp just meant for topical stamp collectors. This is a small stamp ready to serve the needs of bulk mail. The reality, or at least ambition, that there will be bulk mail implies a functioning country. Benin was not really there yet in 1986, but it is a nice piece of optimism that it could be.

Todays stamp is issue A194, a 220 Franc stamp issued by the Peoples Republic of Benin in 1988. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations issued over 2 years reflecting the rapidly depreciating currency. There were even later overprints into the 1990s. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.25 used.

There are two versions of old Dahomey King Behanzin’s story, one African and one French. The African story is that the French sent Porto-Nova administrator Jean-Marie Bayol to demand concessions from the inland African Kingdom of Dahomey and the King cleverly refused to meet with him and the insulted French then trumped up charges of slavery and savagery and brutally massacred his female Amazon warrior army. See https://the-philatelist.com/2019/03/07/dahomey-1941-never-mind-the-canoe-watch-out-for-the-dahomey-amazons/   . The French claim that Bayol was sent to discuss slave raids and was then held prisoner and forced to sign over rights to Porto-Novo. After escaping, Bayol was obliged to return with French troops. In both cases the reality was King Behanzin was easily defeated and went to exile in the French Caribbean.

In 1972 independent Dahomey was not doing well despite finding some oil resources. A successful coup put in military officer Mathieu Kerekou. After a few years of lackluster rule he refashioned Dahomey as Benin and himself as a Marxist. In retrospect, this allowed him to blame the lack of progress on the French and reach out to the eastern bloc for aid. Kerekou, a Catholic, in 1980 converted to Islam with a temporary new first name in an attempt to gain aid from Libya under Kaddafi. When that aid faded so did his conversion. By 1990, after surviving many attempted coups, and his Marxism looking rather dated, Kerekou appeared on tv with the local Catholic Bishop. He elaborately confessed the sins of his government and pledged to go forth and sin no more. An election was held the next year and repentance was not enough and Kerekou lost. The next fellow proved no better and Kerekou returned in 1996 for 10 more years until they managed to term limit him out. Practitioners of voodoo in Benin thought Kerekou must have had powers to survive so many twists and turns and die of old age in his country. Perhaps?

Benin has not been able to cope with the population growth of the country. The population is over 5 times what it was at independence. Thus even has the economy has showed signs of life from debt forgiveness and cotton exports, it has not kept up with the population growth.

Well, my drink is empty, and I will pour another to toast Jean-Marie Bayol for making it out of Dahomey with his head. Against all odds, there is still a plaza named for him in the capital Porto-Novo. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting

Traditional Africa seems strange. Dahomey  was conquered by the French to end the slave trade. To do that, they had to defeat the Dahomey Kingdom’s army of female Amazon warriors. 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 issue from Dahomey during it’s French period show National Geographic style views of Dahomey. In doing so, I think they make the point that it is not an important place to the French. It was perhaps a little to foreign.

The stamp today is issue A7, a 2 Centime stamp issued by French Dahomey in 1941. It was part of 22 stamp issue in various denominations. There are further issues that lack this stamps RF. These are considered fake and were issued by the German puppet Vichy government but not sold for postage in Dahomey. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is mint or used.

Dahomey was a kingdom in west Africa in modern day Benin. The King employed an all female army. To European armies that encountered them, they were known as Dahomey Amazons. Locally the female warriors were known as ahosi, which means King’s wives. The main industry was the slave trade and the army was used for slave raids. In the 1850s, the British tried to get Dahomey away from the slave trade and get them to stop raiding nearby outposts in Nigeria looking for slaves. They tried to get the King to get involved in the palm oil trade. When Dahomey refused to end their participation in the trade, Britain eventually blockaded Dahomey’s ports.

Dahomey than reached out to the French who got the British blockade lifted in exchange for trade concessions. The French than built a new port but at this point the Dahomey tax system was still in place and the Dahomey army was still raiding for slaves. In the 1890s, the French decided to bring Dahomey under control directly  and 2 wars were fought with the Dahomey army. At first the French refused to fire on the female warriors who only had bayonets and no guns. The hesitation allowed the Amazons to aggressively attack French officers. Eventually in 1892 the Amazon warriors were engaged in a Bayonet charge where 500 were killed at the loss of only 6 French. The King was captured soon afterwards and the once 6000 strong Amazons officially disbanded, although French colonial officials were attacked repeatedly by knife wielding females throughout the colonial era. The last female veteran of the Kingdom of Dahomey died in 1979 at over a hundred years old.

By then Dahomey had been independent for 18 years and had renamed itself the Peoples Republic of Benin. There are two current pretenders to the old Throne of Dahomey. The modern Benin armed forces is only about 4000 and has no all female units.

Well my drink is empty and I am rendered speechless by this previously unknown to me history. Thirsty, but still speechless. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.