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Philippines 1775 - 1878 By Geoffrey Lewis
Introduction I am pleased to share my exhibit of Philippines Postal
History with other collectors on the IPPS website. Here is the story of my
journey to form this collection. This story has two parts. Firstly, I will share with you how I built
up this collection, but the collection is not an end in itself. The second part of the story is the
continuation of the journey. By using the knowledge I gained on the
Philippines, I have managed to build up many other worldwide postal history
collections. Part 1. Building this Collection
I have always been a stamp collector, at least
from when I turned six years old. I collected stamps from countries all over
the world, collecting one of each without being too worried about varieties. In 1975 I met Lolita in Sydney, who had migrated
from the Philippines to Australia as a teacher in 1973, and we married soon
after. I started collecting the stamps
of the Philippines across the Republic, Japanese, American
and Spanish periods. It was a great
way to learn the history of this fascinating country. In 1982, I exhibited for the first time. This
comprised of only stamp issues from the Spanish through to the Republic
periods. A good friend told me to start collecting covers, saying “the best
time to start collecting postal history is yesterday”. Each time I exhibited,
there was a higher percentage of covers, and the
ending date of the exhibit moved earlier. Eventually, the exhibit was
entirely postal history of the Spanish Period up to 1878, when the
Philippines joined the UPU. From about 1990, I concentrated on the postal
history of the Spanish period. The other major collectors at this time
included Mario Que (Philippines), Antonio Cuesta (Spain), Fritz-Walter Lange
(Philippines and Germany) and Kenneth Clark (UK). I personally met all of
them and we got on well, as we shared a common passion. Competition for any Spanish Philippine cover was
intense for about 7 or 8 years. I found it almost impossible to buy any cover
with spectacular stamps or markings. I concentrated on analysing covers with
less spectacular appearances, so that I could recognise differences in rates
and routes. I learnt a lot about the maritime rates and markings used by
Spain, Britain, France and the United States. That is why the focus of my exhibit is on the
routes of mail from the Philippines. There is also a strong emphasis on the
postal rates found on these covers. Part 2. The Journey after the
Philippines
By studying and collecting Philippines postal
history, I had built up considerable worldwide postal history knowledge. One
area was the knowledge of worldwide postal routes, and the other was about
the maritime postal systems of the four great countries: Spain, Britain,
France and the United States. Find another country to collect: Cuba
I wanted to find another country to collect. It had
to be a country with extensive mail sent by ship. There had to be lots of
maritime mail before 1850. It would be good if ships of several countries
carried mail from this country. I considered every country in the world. The
winner was Cuba. There were considerable similarities with the Philippines.
Both had been Spanish colonies until the same time (1898), and then were
administered by the United States. The routes from Cuba to Europe were much
simpler, but there were so many more covers available to choose from. Expand to a “More Important” Country
Anyone who has ever collected Philippines or Cuba
knows that they are very important, with a lot of philatelic interest.
However, I sensed that people outside the Spanish world, instinctively look
down on these places as unimportant. What is an important country for postal history?
In my opinion, it is a country which had a lot of international commercial
activity and shipping services in the period between 1800 and 1850, the era
when the worldwide postal services were being developed. Under this
definition, I believe the four most important postal history countries are
Britain, France, Spain and the United States. In 2005, I made a speech
announcing my ambitious goal to form gold-medal postal history exhibits of
those four countries, and I estimated that would take 20 years to develop. Stampless Mail Entering Spain
By collecting and studying mail to Spain from the
Philippines and Cuba, I had learnt a lot about the Spanish postal system.
From 1779, the Spanish postal rates on incoming mail, depended on the country
(or colony) of origin. If a letter reached Spain, and did not have a clear
identifying postmark, the Spanish entry post office applied a mark to
indicate its origin. The Spanish destination post office could then calculate
the postage fee, which also depended on the weight. For its time, this was
quite an efficient postal system. I had to search for letters from all parts of the
Spanish empire. Mail from some colonies, such as Mexico, was easy to find. However,
there are some colonies from which I have never seen a letter to Spain. For
mail from Western Europe to Spain, there were many variations. It has been a
challenge to find letters to Spain from most other countries. In my Philippines exhibit, you will see some
letters from the Belletti correspondence from
Manila to Rome, many of which went via Spain. I definitely wanted to include
these, so I used the title “Stampless Mail entering
Spain” rather than “Incoming Mail to Spain”. I was
very proud to have this exhibit published by Corinphila
in their prestigious Edition d’Or series of important collections (Volume XIV
in 2009). I was the first person from an English-speaking country to be so
honoured. New Orleans
I had learnt quite a lot about United States
postal history by collecting Philippines and then Cuba. I felt the best
United States. postal history collection to form,
would be one about the postal history of a port city. I considered all the
major ports, and felt that New York, Boston and New Orleans had the most
interesting postal history. I chose New Orleans for several reasons: its
connection with Havana; it had a history involving Spain and France; and the
development of the United States westward and inland. Also, I expected less
competition as there were fewer philatelists living in that city who might
want to collect the postal history of their own town. I decided to restrict myself to stampless mail. I believe that when most philatelists
look at a nice cover with classic stamps, they tend to look at the rarity and
condition of the stamps, and ignore the postal history aspects. I also
decided to include letters addressed to or travelling via New Orleans, if
they could help illustrate the story of the New Orleans postal system. My exhibit won a Large Gold medal at the New York
2016 Exhibition. This was the first time that someone outside the United
States had won a Large Gold for a United States postal history subject at an
FIP exhibition held in the United States. The 1836 Anglo-French Postal Convention
Britain and France were the two most powerful
countries in the world, both economically and politically. Many letters from
all over the world were carried by British or French ships. They each had
their own postal system. This convention allowed the two countries to collect
postage on behalf of each other. There were more British ships visiting Manila
than French ships. If someone wanted to write to France, it was tempting to
send the letter by a British ship. Before the 1836 Anglo-French Postal Convention,
the letter had to be mailed to someone in Britain, who would pay the postage
to Britain. This person then paid a second postage fee to send it to France.
Under the Postal Convention, the letter would be addressed to France. When it
arrived in Britain, the Post Office would just write on the letter how much
France owed Britain. The French addressee paid a postage charge, which
included the amount that France owed Britain. This accounting change made it so much easier for
anybody in the world, not just the Philippines, to mail letters
internationally. It was just amazing that no philatelist had ever seriously
studied this extremely important postal development. One possible explanation
is that most postal historians focus on handstamps, and the few handstamp
markings associated with this agreement are not rare. British philatelists
were always focused on the issue of the first postage stamps in 1840, and
ignored the importance of an accountancy agreement with France. I
wrote a book on this subject, which was published in 2015 by the Royal
Philatelic Society London. A New Postal History Challenge
By 2013, all five postal history exhibits had won
Large Gold medals at FIP exhibitions. Thus, I had far exceeded my goal stated
in 2005 to obtain Gold medals within 20 years. In 2019, I commenced a new challenge to form a
worldwide postal history exhibit. The title is “Mail routes in the Atlantic,
Pacific and Indian Oceans, plus the routes between the oceans.” The
Philippines is probably more important to this subject than any other smaller
country, because its mail illustrates the routes across the Pacific and
Indian Oceans. Geoffrey
Lewis |
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Compiled by Nigel
Gooding
September
2020