Postal images of Africa: a new frontier

African Arts, Summer, 2004 by Merrick Posnansky, Agbenyega Adedze, Jessica Levin

More than simply allowing mail to get from one point to another, postage stamps can convey a wide range of information, both deliberately and inadvertantly. Postage stamps were originally construed as prepayment for the service of transporting letters and packages. There are two types of postage stamps: definitives and commemoratives. The former are used regularly for mailing letters and the latter memorialize special events, occasions, or personalities. Although commemoratives could be used to mail letters or packages, they are mainly bought by collectors and stamp dealers. Since such stamps are not necessarily used for postage, they have become an easy way for the post office to raise substantial revenue. Commemorative stamps are also sometimes referred to as "welfare stamps" because it is not uncommon for charitable organizations to request the issue of special stamps where portions of the revenue will go to a special cause.

Stamps are therefore subject to political and social pressure from special interest groups. The stakeholders in any country lobby the Postal Service or the Stamp Advisory Committee to honor a specific occasion or event dear to them. For instance, politicians in a bid for reelection might want their province represented, aviators may want their pioneers represented, or tour operators would recommend the country's tourist sites as a marketing strategy to attract potential tourists. Over the years the images on stamps have become the medium for transmission of propagandist messages about the country of issue to its citizens and the rest of the world. Thus, despite the advent of private courier and mail services, the issuing of postage stamps remains a monopoly of the central government in every country.

For Africanist art historians, postal history and the images on stamps are unexplored fields. Outside of Africa the subject similarly has been neglected, though a few papers have appeared, including at least two by E. R. Jenkins (1977, 1986) that provide an invaluable listing of rock art images on stamps particularly from African countries. European rock paintings, hidden in caves, have not been celebrated or disseminated through the mail except for the rock engravings on Scandinavian stamps. Roswitha Badry (1995) reviewed the postal history of the Islamic world, providing pertinent thoughts about government control of what appears on stamps. We have been aware of the need to stimulate interest in stamp imagery in order to appreciate the historical significance of probably the most common pictorial device in Africa. At the Triennial on African Art at St. Thomas in 2001, a panel (1) convened to discuss stamp imagery. Three of the papers presented in that panel--by Posnansky, Levin, and Adedze--form the core of this paper, together with a fourth presentation by Adedze (2) titled "Commemorating the Chief: The Politics of Postage Stamps in West Africa." Together these papers provide a sense of future directions. There can be either a macro approach dealing with government propaganda and comparing different national policies, which provides the theme of the first paper, or a micro approach in which the symbolism of individual stamps are analyzed, as in the paper by Adedze dealing with the pre-World War II issues commemorating French colonial exhibitions points. The paper by Levin is even more focused, providing an opportunity to examine the art imagery of the wood carvings created for a Gabonese church which were selected for several Gabonese issues. Adedze's second paper indicates the potential for using stamps to discuss varying national attitudes to chieftaincy, a key and hotly debated element of the African political, social, and cultural infrastructure of West Africa. In a further paper given at the West African Archaeological Association meetings in Lomb in December, 2001, (3) Posnansky indicated that the work on postage stamps opens up fresh approaches to other neglected fields that include the imagery on African coins and paper currency (4) as well as on the posters prepared from colonial times to promote tourism both to and within Africa.

[This article was accepted for publication in December 2003.]

(1.) The fourth paper, given by Lisa Aronson of Skidmore College on "Stamps, Trademarks, and Colonization of Nigeria," compared and contrasted the imagery on stamps to that of trademarks used to publicize British manufactured cloth.

(2.) Presented at an international seminar on West African Chieftaincy at the institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana.

(3.) Reagan Street is presently writing a thesis on West African currency notes for her MA in African Studies at UCLA.

References cited

Badry, Roswitha. 1995. "Posta." In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition, eds. C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs and G. Lecomte. Leiden, E.J. Brill.

Jenkins, E. R. 1977. "Checklist of Postage Stamps Depicting Prehistoric Rock Art." South African Archaeological Bulletin 32:77-84.

Jenkins, Elwyn. 1986. "On the Track of Rock Art Postage Stamps." The Digging Stick 3, 1:5-6