The stamp topical guys have found another important country with which to show off western art. Where do you guess this is? Thee choices; the United Arab Emirates, Somaliland, or the Yemen. Those who guessed Yemen were correct. I guessed UAE knowing Finbar Kenny sought out some pretty small villages looking for Emirs and mythic post offices. This actually was a semi autonomous Sultanate affiliated with the British colony at Aden to the north. By the time of this issue however. communists had overrun the area and incorporated it into South Yemen. They let not good for postal use stamp issues continue though notice it is a state now not a Sultanate. 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 quite nice painting on this stamp was painted by Thomas Gainsborough R. A. late in his career in 1785. It was painted of a young couple of 21 years, the future Mr. and Mrs. Hallett and their Pomeranian sheepdog. It was a period when British artists like Gainsborough were getting more recognized with the help of the then new Royal Academy and the fancy people could buy their art locally. Over the fullness of time, the particulars of the people on the painting became less important and the painting acquired the title “The morning walk” that it did not have in period. The painting is in the collection of the British National Gallery.
Sorry value seekers, this is a fake stamp so there is no catalog value.
Forces under Sultan Quaiti conquered this area in southern Yemen in 1881. The Sultan than entered into a treaty relationship with the British in 1890 and the area became a protectorate of the British Colony in Aden. In the early 1960s, the British intended to leave the area and they created a Federation of South Arabia as a hoped for successor state. The Quaiti Sultanate refused to join the Federation.
The British had bigger problems in the area. Pan Arabist communists were receiving much support from Egypt’s Nasser and Britain had to declare a state of emergency in Aden. Over a short period there was a bomb attack on the colonial governor, an Air Aden airliner was shot down with no survivors, and most shockingly the Aden police mutinied and ambushed and killed 23 British soldiers. The British understandably lost interest in South Arabia and just left in November 1968.
Remember though the Quaiti Sultanate was not a part of South Arabia. They hoped for a UN referendum on the areas future. Instead that November the Yemen marched in unopposed and that was the end of the Sultanate. If you think of the relative position of Aden verses Dubai back in the protectorate days and think of Aden now. It would not be difficult to conclude that a still British influenced South Arabia under the Sultans might have been a better outcome. Neither Aden nor Dubai itself have much oil.
Well my drink is empty and one wonders what it must be like in modern Aden. When people think of how some of the old international trading cities thrived post Britain and others just sunk into hell holes do you blame the British, do you blame Nasser, or do you look in the mirror. The last must be the hardest. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.