Stamp Collector

26 www.allaboutstamps.co.uk MAY 2020 The stark colours, striking silhouette and portrait of the King make the KUT 1938 £1 a classic stamp of the British Empire. Ed Fletcher provides a background to the stamp and the latest prices paid A Kenya UgandaTanganyika 1938 KGVI £1 R d And Black? HOW MUCH SHOULD I PAY FOR…? F or centuries before Europeans explored East Africa the indigenous kingdoms and tribes of the region employed runners, camel caravans and dhows to communicate and trade over long distances; even crossing the Indian Ocean with high value spice and ivory cargoes. Ships from north of the Mediterranean eventually reached Zanzibar in the 15th century, gradually evolving ship letter services that linked a number of ports to Aden, to the Nile, thence to Europe, bringing the eastern regions of the continent to the attention of increasing numbers of white explorers and entrepreneurs. In the late-19th century Europe’s Great Powers carved out territories on the East African mainland, with Great Britain and Germany competing for areas that later and separately became Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. An agreement reached in 1885 gave Tanganyika to Germany, while Kenya and Uganda fell to Great Britain. Early settlers heard local tribes using the word Kiinyaa, meaning God’s resting place, the native name for the huge mountain (Africa’s second highest) which dominated the landscape. The British soon anglicized the name to Kenya and applied it, not only to Mount Kenya, but to all Kenyan territory. The native kingdom of Buganda encompassed lands around Lake Victoria where Arab traders from Zanzibar set up markets circa 1840, selling Egyptian and European cloth, guns and gunpowder to the king’s merchants. According to journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley, writing in 1875 following an exploration of the region, a flotilla of more than two hundred war canoes carried the king’s army on punitive expeditions to gather taxes and tributes of ivory for use as foreign exchange in the Arab markets. Inland the Bugandan army marched on well-made roads and communicated over long distances using drum signals to co-ordinate troop movements and battle manoeuvres. It took five years of bloody conflict before superior British arms conquered the tribal kingdom and renamed it the Uganda Protectorate. In Swahili the word tanganyika translates roughly as sailing on the wilderness water, a reference to the world’s longest and second deepest Lake Tanganyika. At the outbreak of the First World War the lake and its surrounding lands formed German East Africa, a MARKET INSIGHT London stamp designers featured lions on several colonial stamps of East Africa, often influenced by British heraldic styles This recent Grosvenor Philatelic Auctions lot was described as a 1938-54 £1 black and red, perf 11¾ x 13, condition fine mint. It sold for £80 Luscinia Stamps of Reading, a long-time eBayUK dealer, recently offered this KGV 1935-37 short set of ten stamps (1c to 2s), including the 10c black/yellow, for £15 plus postage colony almost thrice the area of present- day Germany, and a fertile source of agricultural products such as coffee and rubber, as well as strategically important ores and metals. Germany lost the colony as part of its war reparations to Great Britain in 1922 when the League of Nation’s declared Tanganyika a UK mandate territory. With increasing numbers of white settlers arriving from Depression-hit Britain in the early Twenties, the East African Protectorate achieved crown colony status in 1920 when its name changed to Kenya, though Uganda’s status as a protectorate did not alter at that time. Although the £15 £80