The dominant news stories of the early 2020s have been to do with boundaries.
In Ukraine and in the South China Sea we see that territory is the raw material of national political power.
It’s been a shock for a lot of people.
But boundaries and borders aren’t, have never been, and perhaps never will be as strong and stable as we might like to believe.
The Battle of Malakoff during the Crimean War. The extent of the Ottoman Empire was often decided on the battlefield in blood, but was also reflected in the issue of stamps.
And stamp collectors are among the world’s foremost experts in the matter.
“Dead Countries” the philatelists call them.
They can be surprisingly short-lived, and they tell us a lot about the importance of stamps in history.
Today, an occupying or liberating army would set up an internet connection, in 1916 it would be a Post Office and maybe a telegram.
And any good stamp collection will contain a large number of them, because stamp collectors range across time and history like almost no other specialism.
Here then are five fascinating countries (territories really) that don’t exist other than in stamps.
1. Sarawak
Not a king, but Charles Brooke, born in Burnham on Sea, Somerset, sits on this stamp from Sarawak.
Sarawak sounds made up.
But its story - of freebooting private enterprise - is more typical of the British Empire than you might think.
Sarawak was ruled by the Brooke family, who basically arrived and took it over.
The first so-called White Raja was James Brooke, a British-India-born soldier and adventurer, who was journeying around South, South-East, and East Asia essentially looking for a purpose.
He spied it in Sarawak, used an inheritance to buy, crew, and outfit a yacht, came back, used his men and rifles to help Brunei’s ruler to put down a rebellion and in return was given Sarawak to run.
Sarawak was founded in 1841 and subsequently recognised as a legitimate state by the US and UK (in 1864). By 1888, Sarawak accepted “protected state status” from the British - a not uncommon way for the Empire to grow.
Sarawak survived in this qualified-independent state until the end of World War II, when the UK made it its last newly acquired Crown Colony. It is now a state in Malaysia.
Sarawak issued stamps from March 1, 1869 until the Japanese occupation of 1941.
In the UK, Victoria was shown on stamps, in Sarawak it was James Brooke, the son of the first Raja.
A small territory but highly dependent on international trade, Sarawak’s postal system was simple and with a revenue element to it. Most of the stamps were printed in London.
The unusual story and small issues of Sarawak stamps give them an allure to collectors and they’re certainly a great conversation starter.
2. Zanzibar
Queen Victoria's face - in a variety of portraits - really was a global icon in the 19th century.
If we accept the economy of spice as one of the prime drivers of early imperialism then Zanzibar is an archetypal example.
Its location - its a group of islands just off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean - also made it an important staging post in global slave trading.
The territorial history of Zanzibar, which produced clove, nutmegs and black pepper in large quantities, is not simple. Neither is its postal history.
It was a Portuguese colony and after that the focus of considerable competition among European powers. While remaining nominally independent it became essentially a British colony from the 1890s, first as a protectorate, and from 1913 as a directly ruled colony.
Many countries issued stamps for Zanzibar. Stamps from British India were overprinted for the island, and French and German post offices also operated on the islands at times.
In 1896 the first locally branded definitive stamps were issued, showing the Sultan who was nominally the ruler.
Zanzibar is a fine specialist area for stamp collectors because of the variety of issues for the islands.
3. South West Africa
Printed in two languages and overprinted, the complexities of colonial rule stand out in these South West African stamps.
Sometimes colonising authorities are imaginative. And sometimes they just look at a map and get a name that way.
South West Africa is the latter.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too flippant, as the territory (now Namibia) is the site of a recognised genocide against the Herero and Namaqua people.
The territory was a German colony, they named it Deutsch-Südwestafrika, until 1915, when South Africa took it from Germany during World War I.
South Africa occupied it (illegally for most of the period and enforcing apartheid) until 1990.
The territory has two postal histories: a German one and a South African one.
South African stamps were used for much of the period of occupation, but stamps with South West Africa on them had been issued from 1923.
The territory has some very attractive stamp designs and can be collected in conjunction with Namibian, German colonial, British colonial, UN mandate or South African stamps.
4. British Levant
Disputes over these territories still shape our world today.
Trade between the Ottoman Empire and Europe came at a cost.
The Constantinople authorities signed a series of treaties called Capitulations that included granting European powers (of all sizes) to run their own postal services in their territory.
Britain, France, Italy, Austria, Russia, Poland, Romania, Germany all had post offices in what was then called The Levant.
The Crimean War - in many ways the first modern war of industrial capitalism - further strengthened these services.
The huge territories of the Ottoman Empire meant that there were British Levant post offices in Lebanon, modern Turkey, Greece and Egypt.
Most stamps used in this way were overprinted British issues.
The system finally ended in 1923 with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey.
It’s a popular area for collectors with lots of complexity in terms of stamp cancellations, overprints, currency overprints, post offices and more.
5. Long Island
Sometimes political, military realities are reflected in something as simple as a square of paper and a field printing set.
Not to be confused with the part of New York State, Long Island stamps are much sought-after and short-lived, war-time issues of the British commonwealth.
Named with the practical urgency of men at war, Long Island is now Uzunada, and has also been called Chustan or Keustan.
It’s a - yes, long - island in the Gulf of Izmir off the west coast of Turkey.
And as the Allied powers of World War I made various naval attempts to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war it was occupied by British troops.
Occupation stamps are a fine collecting specialisation; and there’s no shortage of them.
Long Island was a relatively short occupation of a very small territory.
That means the stamps issued there (by Lieutenant Commander H Pirie-Gordon) were rudimentary and are very small in number.
Issued for just a few weeks in 1916, these unassuming squares of paper are highly desired by collectors across a number of territorial and historical specialities. If you see them for sale and the price is good you should probably buy them.
Rare historical stamps for sale
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