The Symbolism of Postage Stamps

A Source for the Historian

Bibliographic Data

ID10076232
AuthorsD Reid (0000-0001-9629-4338, corresponding author), Donald M Reid
Year1984
Volume19
Issue2
Pages223-249
Publication date1984-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002200948401900204
OpenAlexW2142832298
LanguageEN
Citations received38
References cited2

Small things can start us off in new ways of thinking, and I was started off by the postage stamps of our area. The British administration gave us beautiful stamps. These stamps depicted local scenes and local things; there was one called 'Arab Dhow'. It was as though, in those stamps, a foreigner had said, 'This is what is most striking about this place'. Without that stamp of the dhow I might have taken the dhows for granted. As it was, I learned to look at them. Whenever I saw them tied up at the waterfront I thought of them as something peculiar to our region, quaint, something the foreigner would remark on, something not quite modern, and certainly nothing like the liners and cargo ships that berthed in our own modern docks.' The speaker is an East Indian merchant in one of V.S. Naipaul's novels. Numismatics has long been recognized not only as a hobby and an investment but also as a scholarly discipline of considerable value to the general historian. Philately, in contrast, has never been regarded as a scholarly discipline. Philatelists spend hours cataloguing minor printing variations on particular issues, talk mostly to each other, and publish in stamp magazines that are not indexed in the Readers Guide, Historical Abstracts or Social Sciences Index. Most historians have a bias in favour of written documents. Except for art historians they tend to dismiss visual evidence of the type that stamps might provide as mere 'illustrations' of points already made on the basis of written sources. This is unfortunate, for stamps are excellent primary sources for the symbolic messages which governments seek to convey to their citizens and to the world. But after all, it might be objected, postage stamps are unimportant because they are all but invisible. Few people can describe the

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Hobby · Literature · Media studies · Minor (academic · Nothing · Penny · Philately · Political science · Postage Stamps · Sociology · Visual arts · History · Law · National Identity and Symbolism · Philosophy