FOCUS ON FRENCH COLONIES

Most childhood albums had a good smattering of French Colonies in their single volume of world stamps.
A prowling leopard could be purchased for a penny, alongside native huts, tropical produce, exotic flowers.
As we collectors have in time reached a more advanced world, German States or Cape Triangulars may be the passion of the moment. Still, for an adventurous sideline or a whole new field for 2024, French Colonies offer a fascinating world.
In 1849 (introduction of stamps to France) various French possession in America, India and the Caribbean had come and gone, what remained were mostlytrading posts or consular offices where French stamps can be found with a relevant foreign cancel. The new Empire began with the conquest of Algeria from 1830; this was a bitter struggle only completed in 1903. Algeria was the one territory where Europeans (often Italian or Spanish, as well as French) settled in large numbers to farm or engage in commerce.
Later French colonisation was concentrated on the rest of Africa, in a race against the British, for military control and for the exploitation of natural resources such as tropical food products, hardwood forestry, and minerals. Another factor in exploration was missionary work, to spread the gospel, and at an elementary level, to encourage education. Many of the colonial produce, local fauna, and indigenous settlements are shown on the stamps of the 1920s to 1950s. Development tended to be in the hands of big companies supported by stock exchange investment, hence large scale development of infrastructure and extensive mono-crop agricultural plantations. This was in contrast to British Africa where long-term emigration of settlers was encouraged with their own farms or commerce. The French administrative system remained more aloof and disengaged from the local inhabitants. Rights of the local population to travel abroad or vote were extremely limited. Colonial boundaries were carved out without regard to tribal settlement and changed at will to suit a coterie of administrators in Paris. Black troops were found useful in WWI and WWII but recompense and a path to independence remained painfully slow until the 1950s. At this stage the cost of maintaining the vast African Empire became onerous, and, like with the British in India, the final moves to independence arrived in haste and turmoil.
IndoChina received more steady settlement, but Japanese occupation in WWII unwittingly encouraged the local populace to think about independence; in 1940 they found they could live without the French "so why not now?". A collection of stamps and postal history can show the change in regimes over 1940 to the 1950s and the bitter Vietnam war.
Polynesia and similar "paradise" islands like Reunion attracted wanderlust settlers (Gauguin). The stamps again portray native traditions, exotic birds and fish. The other side of the coin, humid heat and tropical diseases, is not shown on the stamps!
Postal history can be fascinating, with mail from far-flung outposts of the Foreign Legion in the Saharan desert, or missionaries in the jungles of the French Congo. Pioneer airmail, leper hospitals like Lambaréné (of Dr Schweitzer in Gabon), maritime mail making the connection with the homeland, all go to tell the story of isolated outposts in the heart of Africa.