French Guinea stamp – The-Philatelist

The goal of bringing third worlders in via connected people grants is for them to benefit from first world progress and for the first worlder to learn about hardships from the new arrival. What happens though when the third worlders attracted are their rich, connected and in Jose Vela Zanetti’s case not even a third worlder. Interestingly the Guggenheim fellowship that brought Zanetti to New York has been suspended indefinitely over worries over it’s efficacy. 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 offerring from The Philatelist.

This stamp displays Mankind’s Struggle for a Lasting Peace, a mural painted by Jose Vela Zanetti that sits in the hallway outside the Security Council chamber in the United Nations New York headquarters. The image on the stamp has little to do with Guinea. When your third worlders are fake and have benefited from a many year education in Tuscany, there is an advantage in that he understands as a fellow cosplayer in any real struggle what the UN wanted. An image rich in the pornography of the toiling of the third worlder with any devine purpose or hope edited out.

Todays stamp is issue AP7, a fifty franc air mail stamp issued by independent Guinea on November 11th, 1967. This was a three stamp and one souvenir sheet issue displaying the art collection of the United Nations Security Council. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents canceled to order.

Jose Vela Zanetti was born into a rich family in Burgos, Spain. He showed an interest in art and studied in Leon and Madrid. With the Spanish Civil War heating up, the family got him a scholarship to continue his studies in peaceful Florence, Italy. The victory of what Jose felt was the wrong side in 1939 left him with a conundrum over where to bounce next. Stay in an Italy gearing up for war again on the wrong side or bounce back to peaceful Spain where his politics may be a hinderance. As with several other exiled Spanish artists, Jose moved to the peaceful Dominican Republic.

Jose hit the ground running in the D. R. Within a year of his arrival he hosted his first solo art show. Giving the audience what it wanted, he impresed the D. R.’s right wing dictator Trujillo. Soon he was inundated with commissions to put his murals in many of the new public buildings going up at the time. He was also named a Professor of Art at the local university and eventually named the Dean.

There was however the problem of being a big fish in a small pond. Jose applied for and received a Latin America oriented Guggenheim Fellowship in 1951. The idea was to bring in the Latin American artist mid career and giving him enough money to live for a few years in the hope that he or she will do their best work. This is what happened for Jose. He quickly applied for and won the commission from the UN for the mural that appears on the stamp. It is his most famous work.

In 1960, Jose inherited the estate that he grew up in. Despite Franco, he moved back to Burgos, Spain with his wife and son. His art shifted from murals to paintings and the subject matter shifted from the political to landscapes. He lived there another 39 years.

Well my drink is empty. I will pour another for the bouncing cosplayers, it is where the world is heading, Mr. Vela Zanetti just got there early. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The colonies of France in Africa were just not that profitable. The slave trade was over as far as colonials and the easy gold was no longer easy to find. Palm oil trade had many intermediaries and much competition from neighbor trade post. The obvious question is then why not just leave? 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.

These early French colonial offerings do not appeal as much to me as the equivalent British colonies. They are better than the Portuguese who usually just show the King or De Gamma’s ship, or the Germans that often just show the Kaiser’s yacht. The French stamps usually show a native scene, here fording a river. How the British did them better was to show them as part of a greater whole with a common purpose. The British were sometimes kidding themselves as to whether that was really happening, but the other colonials often didn’t even bother.

Todays stamp is issue A6, a one Cent stamp issued by the French colony of Guinea in 1913. It was part of a whopping 42 stamp issue in various denominations that lasted for many years. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents unused. The folks on the stamp weren’t fording the river to get to the post office. There is an imperforate version of this stamp worth $75.

The west African coast was littered with trading posts. Most started as Portuguese, but the end of the slave trade saw most of theirs abandoned. The word Guinea comes from the Portuguese word for black people. There are now three independant, black run countries in Africa with that name so it had real staying power. The three, now two, Guyanas in South America come from the same root word. The English, French, and Germans began to have some luck with the palm oil trade. Palm oil was an ingredient in soap, so at that level of development, the natives had no need for it themselves. Diola tribal merchants brought the palm oil to the coastal trade stations including Conakry that became the capital of the colony and later the independent country. These outposts also had to function as forts as there were often native raids from the nearby Fouta Jallon highlands that contained warlike, nomadic, and Islamic Fulani tribe.

To avoid war between Europeans, A congress in Berlin in 1884 mapped out Africa as to which country had rights in which area. The tragedy of it was the spheres of influence extended far beyond existing trading posts. France had been in an anti colonial mood after reverses in the French colony in Indo-China. If the trading posts continued to not create wealth the posts would likely have been abandoned as with the Portuguese. The colony up to then was not even called Guinea but Southern Rivers showing that they were just trading posts at the mouth of rivers. Instead the French sent expeditions inland to bypass the Diola merchants and conquer Fouta Jallon. The last Imamate of Fouta Jallon leader, Boko Biro was defeated by the French at the Battle of Poredaka in 1896. Boko Biro escaped but was then captured by a Fulani rival and beheaded. Apparently no love for the loser.

Needless to say all this did not make the colony more profitable. In the late 1950s, the French tried to find a face saving way out and offered the African colonies a vote on staying in the French community with ever more self rule. Guinea was the only country that voted for the clean break and the French duly left. Interestingly, with France gone the trading post cities did not die with natives returning to the highlands. Even has the first President for life styled himself Touré’ after an earlier African anti colonial. There is no meaningful trade any more but the country relies on food aid which is more easily accessible on the coastal cities. Conakry had 60,000 people when independence came in 1958, the city now has more than two million. That is an estimate, how would you count?

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