Tag: Madagascar stamp

An African Queen is exiled overnight by Sedan Chair and that if what the new French colonial authority decides to put on one of the first stamps. 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 today’s offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp  has a real feel of sticking it to the locals. France had only just conquered the place and instead of promising a better future or showing the sights of the place they issue this threatening stamp. If we can exile the Queen, just think of what we could do to you. The former Merina Kingdom did not issue stamps so it is likely the stamps would only be of use to colonial French.

The stamp today is issue A9, a 3 centimes stamp issued by the French Colony of Madagascar from 1908-1928. It displayed a sedan chair, which is a chair or supported by horizontal posts that in turn are carried by a team of peoples shoulders. The stamp was a part of a 36 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents. If Madagascar ever develops a stamp collecting hobby, ha ha, this stamp should rapidly increase in value as an historical artifact.

The Merina Kingdom had ruled Madagascar for many centuries. By tradition, a Queen from the hill people would marry a man from the coastal area who would then serve as Prime Minister. In the late 19th century, a deal was struck that gave France, Madagascar in return for allowing Britain, Zanzibar. The French landed and conquered the island in 1895. Only 60 French were lost in the battles but several thousand fell to malaria. Initially the last Queen, Ranavalona III was allowed to stay virtually under house arrest in her palace. She signed papers naming the new colonial governor and was surprised to know she would not have to take him as a husband, as was the local custom.

After some rebellion on the part of the local peasants, the French decided that Queen Ranavalona should go into exile, first to the island of Reunion and later to Algiers. Early one morning a few of her family and servants were loaded on to sedan chairs and taken on a several day journey to the coast where the boat to Reunion was waiting. The journey was long and perhaps realizing this was to be her last sight of her country, she was angry and quite drunk. At the boat she met up with her niece, and heir apparent, 14 years old and eight months pregnant with the baby of a French soldier. A rough boat journey saw her niece give birth to a daughter but die 5 days later. Queen Ranavalona adopted the girl. The girl ended up a nurse and socialite in France.

In exile in Algiers, the Madagascar colony paid her a small stipend but she was chronically short of funds, The French governor in Algiers wrote several times to his counterpart in Madagascar asking them to raise her pension but the requests were ignored. The Queen made repeated formal requests to be allowed to visit Madagascar but these were all refused. She was eventually allowed trips to Paris where as a Queen, she made quite an impression on the social scene. She died in Algiers in 1917 and again the Algiers Governor had to write Madagascar to try to get them to live up to keeping up her Algiers tomb. These were again ignored but in 1937 her remains were moved to the royal tombs in Madagascar.

An independent Madagascar did not treat their Royals any better. The Royal complex caught on fire mysteriously in 1995 and many royal relics burned or were looted. The tombs of the royals were all destroyed but remains appeared in the town square the next day that turned out to be Ranavalona III. The fire was officially an accident but many believe it was arson by the government to distract from a corruption scandal. The site had been on a list to become a UNESCO historical site.

Well my drink is empty unlike Queen Ranavalona’s. Come again  for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.

Here we have another story involving the lead times of esspecially farm out stamps. The country name on the stamp, Malagasy had gone away with the change of government in 1992. The Cadillac automobile on the stamp is a 1985 model last built in 1988. The date on the stamp is indeed 1992 though the issue date on the stamp is 1993. Time isn’t on this stamps side. 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 shouldn’t like this stamp but I do. I talked above about the timing issues but the fact that they put this particular model of Cadillac on a stamp from a place where I would be surprised if even a single example sold intrigues me. I am actually a fan of this model, but most Cadillac fans hate them as just too small and unflashy. This raises the intriguing to me question of whether the stamp designer just lazily grabbed a stock picture of a Cadillac, or were the picking it to make fun?

Todays stamp is issue A351, a 6o Franc stamp issued by the Madagascar Third Republic on January 28th, 1993. It was an eight stamp issue in various denominations. Each stamp features a slightly out of date model of a different manufacturer. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents cancelled. The stamp is this issue with a Renault automobile is imperferate for some reason and that bounces the value of it to $3.00.

Cadillacs were always very large and flashy luxury cars. Where they had offered a smaller model, it was aimed at female and urban drivers. In the late 1970s, American car manufactures were going to be required by the government for the cars they sell to have a set standard of fuel economy. At first Cadillac tried to finesse the issue by offering diesels and offering a gizmo on their gas engine that could turn off two or even four cylinders of their V8 engine to benefit economy. Unfortunately the economy benefit was not enough and further both gas and diesel engine proved troublesome. What was Cadillac to do? The conventional wisdom was that they should build much smaller cars more in the style of Mercedes.

Instead, and why I really like them, they tried to match as much as possible a traditional Cadillac just on a smaller scale. The cars became front wheel drive and mutch boxier to match the ample room of the old. The car still had a V8 engine, with traditional American low end torque but now smaller, cast in aluminum, and mounted transversely. Cadillac was the first manufacturer in the world to offer such a package and it was never common. Though rack and pinion steering and an independant rear suspension was added, the tuning though was to match the old smoothness and quiet. The car was 2 feet shorter and 800 pounds lighter than the car it replaced. In my opinion, and I am a tiny minority of Cadillac fans, the car was a tech masterstroke. Though early sales were good, rival Lincoln hit back with an all American “Mine’s Bigger” ad campaign. The fact that Lincoln was still bigger had more to do lead times than anything else but small big style Cadillac sales went down and the old Lincoln sales went up. Then later in 1985 the Government froze the fuel economy standard and thus the big Lincoln was allowed to continue. In 1989, Cadillac restyled this car to make it look bigger.

The transition from Malagasy to Madagascar was not very successful. The country had the same strongman  since 1975 and in 1991 400, 000 marched to the Presidential Palace outside the capital demanding change. The Presidential guard dispersed the crowd by firing on them from helicopters targeting leaders. The President than agreed to the transition of power and a new election that he lost. Though there was the complication in that the strongman refused to vacate the Presidential Palace. He was right to stick it out as his replacement proved even more incompetent and was impeached. The country then reelected the strongman but he did not revert the name of the country to Malagasy.

Well my drink is empty and I like it when one stamp allows me to gasbag on about vastly different topics. Come again tomorrow for another that can be learned from stamp collecting.

So what do you do when you are just broke. Do you become independent and go it alone with the thinking that if we build our way out of this, it will be our achievement alone and we will have built our own prosperity. Or do you just try to put a local black face on what the French were doing, in order that over time the economic benefits (there must have been some right) will more accrue to the locals. When the GDP per capita is less than $100 a year at independence, independent Malagasy reached out to France, hoping for as much help as possible. 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 of stamps shows the new coats of arms of various cities around Madagascar, in this case Antsirabe. If you have ever wondered what the coat of arms should look like for a place that started as a leper colony, well now you know.

Todays stamp is issue A50, a 1.5 Franc stamp issued by Malagasy in 1964. It was a seven stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it was mint or used.

The people of Madagascar are diverse. The coastal areas house a different people than those that reside in the central highlands. This was finessed prior to colonial status by having a Queen from the highlands marry a coastal chief who then acts as her Prime Minister. When the French came, the last Queen thought she was going to have to marry the French General who had conquered the place. Instead she left and moved to Paris, see https://the-philatelist.com/2018/02/27/madagascar-the-french-exile-the-last-queen-by-sedan-chair/ . After independence, it might have been expected to break down along tribal lines. Instead the divisions were based on the decision to stay close to France. Left leaners in the Capital and other big cities sought a firmer break with France and a more aggressive pursuit of socialism.

Highland President Philbert Tsiranana tried instead to get ever more aid from France. 5 years after independence, 75 % of the government budget was aid from France. During his 12 years as President, it amounted to 400 million dollars with another 150 million from the EEC. The aid was not well spent and the welfare of the people stayed low. They were not however starving as the country contained more cows than people. President Tsiranana began to spend ever more time in the south of France, unfortunately not an option open to the majority of the people. Has opposition grew, he had rebellious people banished to the island of Novo Lava. At the ten year point or independence a status report on how things were going was published. It criticized the government for mismanagement and it’s authors were then arrested. The French government lost faith in Tsiranana and thought he was becoming senile. When protest grew to being out of control, The French army refused to intervene and Tsirnana turned over power to the army. Now it was the leftist turn to mess things up.

Antsirabe is one of the cooler places in the highlands and has sources of fresh water and thermal springs. The town was founded in 1874 as a religious retreat by Norwegian Lutheran Missionaries. They then added a hospital to treat lepers and a leper colony quickly developed. The French administration and the Catholic Church discovered the cool weather and the area became an administrative center. The place is now more known for it’s intact colonial core and the pouse-pouse human pulled rickshaws used to get around than any remaining lepers.

Well, my drink is empty and if I arrange a pouse-pouse to get me home, I may have another. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.