WAY TO GO, STEELERS

Postage Stamps from the Periphery, Part III

Recently on PostSecret I came across something like: "I used to be an anarchist but now I read the Wall Street Journal every day." Ok, man, what the fuck. Is it your past or your present that you're embarassed about? Why should it be a secret that you grew the fuck up? This post is dedicated to you, jackass. I'll see your reading the WSJ and raise you "taking time out of my day to write the third installment on my bitchin' stamp collection." Really now, just because you called yourself an anarchist and went around your middle school after hours drawing anarchy symbols all over the bathrooms and then went home to listen to L7 and quote Nirvana while chatting on your hacker-wannabe's BBS back when a 14.4 modem was hot shit, doesn't mean you can't eventually grow up, does it? DOES IT?!

Regardless. Here's my continuing tribute to the more arcane and dusty corners of world history.

Mauritius

The tiny island nation of Mauritius, country dialing code (+230), sits quite alone in the Indian Ocean on the other side of Madagascar. I recently learned a whole lot about Mauritius for work, and I can say with certainty that at least one of their customs officials is a thief and a damn liar. Originally settled by the Dutch and named after Prince Maurice of Nassau (that’s Germany, not the Bahamas), it subsequently passed through French and British hands before gaining independence in 1968. It was actually the fifth nation in the world to issue postage stamps (??), and is apparently used fairly often as a setting for Bollywood films. I also have a t-shirt purchased in the capital, Port Louis, that says “Enjoy the Summertime”. Thanks, Roselynd.




-------------------------------------------------------------------

Montserrat

Talk about shitty geologic luck. Once considered the jewel of the Carribean, the British territory suffered a 1995 volcano eruption that rendered most of this island severely uninhabitable. Two thirds of the population has evacuated, and the volcano just keeps on erupting. Mother nature’s a bitch.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Rhodesia and Nyasaland

The entire Rhodesia region was acquired in the 1800s by the British South Africa Company, and named for Cecil Rhodes of "Cape to Cairo" fame. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (also referred to as the Central African Federation) wasn’t really a federation at all, but a pseudo-self-governing amalgamation of the colony of Southern Rhodesia and the [you guessed it] Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia protectorates; the move to combine them all in 1953 was calculated to counterbalance the newly-forming, left-leaning black independent nations with the white-run states of South Africa and Mozambique. Eventually Northern Rhodesia said “fuck this” and split off to become Zambia, Nyasaland was all like “wtf, me too” and formed Malawi, but Southern Rhodesia trudged on to become Zimbabwe, only after the white-run government attempted to declare independence from the UK (while still recognizing the Queen) as a last-ditch effort to maintain white rule. This didn't last very long, and in 1979 Mugabe told everyone to STFU and the rest is tragic history…









----------------------------------------------------------------------

Kenya Uganda Tanganyika

These are a bit of a philatelitic aberration [read:HOT], as K/U/T never existed as a single united colony. Rather they were printed for use throughout these East African regions, even though part of the territory covered technically belonged to ze Germans. Tanganyika refers to the area of the African Great Lakes region south of Lake Victoria; originally part of German East Africa, it passed through British hands via a UN trusteeship and became the Republic of Tanganyika in 1962. Two years later it joined names and territory with Zanzibar and is now the proud nation of Tanzania [get it?].

----------------------------------------------