Imagine seashells that appear on the beaches of your small atolls being accepted far and wide as currency up there with gold and silver. Goes pretty far to creating a tropical paradise, except when it doesn’t. 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 the spire of the Old Friday Mosque dating from 1658 in the Maldives. Well it was a Sultanate. Before the Europeans came the passing traders were Arab, Indian and Persian and they rose up and tossed out the Portuguese with their ideas of Christianity. Since then Europeans made deals but left them alone. Until they were just left alone.
Todays stamp is issue A1 a five cent stamp issued by the Sultanate of Maldives in 1909. Even though this was the first issue it is unfortunately too late to be denominated in sea shells. Tristan de Chuna’s first stamp was denominated in potatoes so it could have been. Instead we are left with boring Rupees. How are the good followers of the Sultan supposed to get ahead using the other guy’s money. This was a 13 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents unused.
The Maldives are a group of 1194 islands south of Sri lanka in the Indian ocean. It was populated by first Buddhists from India but came under the sway of Muslim traders from Basra in modern Iraq. They had two products to trade in addition to the replenishing ship stores common to such islands on trade routes. One product they had were super strong ropes spun from fibers of the coconut. Traders would also accept cowrie seashells in return for the rice they were selling. The shells were traded as currency as far away as Africa and China. This sounds perhaps a little too idealist as a way to make it sound as if everything was perfect before those pesky Europeans showed up but who knows maybe it was true.
The Portuguese came from Goa in India bringing with them missionaries, see https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/10/remember-the-divine-duty-of-empire/ . Big mistake, the Sultan organized riots that removed them way back in 1573. The day of the riot is still a holiday. Later Dutch and still later British traders operated out of the Maldives but interfered less in local affairs and paid tribute to the Sultan. They weren’t as interested in the sea shells and rope spinning is a lot of work. A dispute between Arab traders brought the British more involved as they asked for British protections as Indian British subjects. The area was becoming ever more dependent on Ceylon as ships visited less.
After World War II the area moved toward independence. An airport had been built on an atoll well south of the capital and when the Royal Air Force lost their last air base in Pakistan, RAF Mauripur, they offered to rent the old Gan airport to support the long flights to British bases in the Far East. The Maldives accepted but then one year later the Sultan decided to try to raise the rent. The atolls near the base worried that the British would instead just leave and they would lose the jobs provided by the base. A short lived break away United Suvadive Republic formed to honor terms of the original British lease. The Sultan had a change of heart and reclaimed the atolls of Suvadive and honor the original British lease. Speaking of changes of heart, the British abandoned the base in 1976 as they weren’t doing much in the Far East anymore and planes could fly farther. The Gan base was offered to the Soviets but at a price they wouldn’t accept.
Well my drink is empty. The Sultan now calls himself President but can he make the place open enough to tourists to bring prosperity. Perhaps if they handed out a cowrie shell to arrivals? Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.