2571. 🇬🇮 Butterflies From Gibraltar Again.

 

New issues -

🇬🇮 Royal Gibraltar Post Office -

30 September 2024 - Butterflies of Gibraltar (II) - 6 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing all 6 stamps. Designed by Jonathan Pointer and Stephen Perera and lithographed by Cartor. Rating:- *.

🇳🇬 Lagos.

10 June 1874 - À number of articles have appeared in the Nigerian press in the past few months drawing attention to the fact that NIPost, the postal service of Nigeria, has failed to comment on, and to issue stamps to commemorate, the 150th anniversary of the first issue of postage stamps in territory which is now part of the modern nation of Nigeria. This was the British colony of Lagos.

  Lagos had been seized from the local inhabitants by the imperialist Oba of Benin in the late 16th century and it was colonised by the Empire of Benin. In 1730 the Oba of Lagos invited Portuguese slave traders to Lagos island where he collaborated with them to establish a flourishing slave trade in his territory much to his own personal benefit though 18th century Lagos remained a vassal state within the Benin Empire.

 In the first half of the nineteenth century there was constant civil warfare in the Yoruba hinterland as well as frequent invasions from neighbouring African states. Lagos Island was the hub, by then, of a flourishing slave trade. The British Empire abolished slavery in all British territories in 1833 and set about the suppression of the worldwide slave trade. To this end, a British naval expedition bombarded the slave trade island of Lagos in 1851 and deposed the Oba Kosoko and replaced him with Oba Akitoye who signed the Great Britain-Lagos Treaty on 1 January 1852 which made slavery illegal in Lagos. The Yoruba emigrant, James White, wrote in 1853, “By the taking of Lagos, England has performed an act which the grateful children of Africa shall long remember … One of the principle roots of the slave trade is torn out of the soil”.

  The British appointed Louis Fraser as Vice-consul on the island and then established a full consulate with Benjamin Campbell as the first consul. However there was constant conflict between the Oba and the supporters of the previous one and the need to intervene to keep the peace on the island resulted in Lagos effectively becoming a British protectorate in all but name and the demands of security and trade saw the island becoming a base for the extension of a British protectorate over the troubled hinterland. Eventually a British naval force landed at Lagos and it was proclaimed a British colony in August 1861.

  The colony’s first postage stamps - six values in all, 1d, 2d, 3d, 4d, 6d and 1 shilling - were issued on 10 June 1874 and were typographed by De La Rue on paper with watermark Crown and CC and perforated 12.5.

  Perhaps we may yet see an issue this year from the Nigerian postal service which commemorates this significant anniversary in the country’s national and postal history.