An obscure out of the way island brings in 8 million dollars of goods a year and only exports 1 million. Sounds like a place that is not working. This is literally the case, but that does not mean there have not been 100s of years of schemers with an investment opportunity to turn that around. 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 is a little bit of alternate reality. The stamps show road building, apartment building, a new hospital ward, and new schools. All things Britain is doing for Saint Helena. At the time, the fear on the island was that much of the help from Britain would just dry up. This stamp issue makes Saint Helena seen awfully expensive. Perhaps the real goal was to make the island seem like a happening place and a nice place to settle.
Todays stamp is issue A36, a half penny stamp issued by Saint Helena on November 4th, 1968. It was part of a fifteen stamp issue in various denominations that show progress on the island. According to Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is mint or used.
Saint Helena was discovered uninhabited by the Portuguese in 1502. The Portuguese settlement did not last. The next interest was from The British East India company as it was a useful stopping point on the around Africa wind powered sailing route. Thus the island came into their hands and they tried to set up coffee plantations manned by Africans, Chinese, and even a few Indians. The remote location made it usefull place to house exiles, most famously Napoleon, but also a exiled Sultan of Zanzibar and later Boer prisoners of war. The India trade dried up with steam power and the Suez canal and the islands administration passed to Britain. For a while, the Royal Navy’s anti slavery patrols off Africa were based out of Saint Helena
I mentioned the coffee plantation and Napoleon’s exile. Napoleon had mentioned in letters that Saint Helena coffee was quite good. The local coffee planter named Saul Solomon used the Napoleon connection to market coffee in Paris and London. The coffee was the most expensive in the world and the high price realized allowed the plantation to survive the end of slavery and the departure of former slaves and coolies from the island. Eventually the company was sold to a South African concern and then took over by the Saint Helena government to keep coffee production going as the influence of Napoleon’s opinion on todays coffee drinker has faded.
The next scheme was postage stamps. They started early in 1856 and still today comprise 10 percent of exports. It is more a commission than an export as the stamps were printed first in Britain and more recently in China.
The latest scheme is the airport. After much discussion and a vote on Saint Helena, it was decided for Britain to construct an airport at the edge of a cliff. This was the only possible place and it may or may not yield landing and takeoff problems due to wind shear at the cliff. After many delays Britain opened the airport in 2016 and in 2017 attracted a South African airline to offer weekly service with a small regional jet.
Britain did something else nice for Saint Helena recently. They changed their citizenship standing giving British passports and thus the ability to move to the Britain. So far 20% of the formally 5000 residents have taken advantage.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another for the British Commonwealth Stamp collector. We all love the stamps of these far off posts of Empire despite the cost. I wonder if farming the issues to China will be the death of that? Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.