More than simply allowing mail to secure from one point to another.

More than simply allowing mail to secure from one point to another, postage stamps can deliver over a wide range of information, the one and the other deliberately and inadvertantly. Postage stamps were originally constru as prepayment for the service of transporting alphabetic characters and packages. There are brace types of postage stamps: definitives and commemoratives. The former are used regularly for mailing epistles and the latter memorialize special consequences occasions, or personalities. Although commemoratives could be used to mail epistles or packages, they are mainly bought by means of collectors and stamp dealers. Since as it was stamps are not necessarily used for postage, they have become an easy way for the position office to raise substantial reward Commemorative stamps are also sometimes referr to as "welfare stamps" because it is not out of the way for charitable organizations to solicitation the issue of special stamps where portions of the return will go to a special cause.

Stamps are therefore make subordinate to political and social compressing from special interest groups. The stakeholders in any nation lobby the Postal Service or the Stamp Advisory Committee to honor a specific occasion or adventure dear to them. For instance, politicians in a bid for reelection might want their province set forthed aviators may want their pioneers set forthed or tour operators would approve the country's tourist sites as a marketing strategy to attract potential tourists. through the whole extent of the years the images forward stamps have become the medium for transmission of propagandist messages about the native land of issue to its citizens and the stay of the world. Thus, despite the advent of private courier and mail services, the issuing of postage stamps remains a monopoly of the central direction in every country.

For Africanist art historians, postal history and the images forward stamps are unexplored fields. Outside of Africa the expose similarly has been neglected, although a few papers have appeared, including at least sum of two units by E. R. Jenkins (1977 1986) that provide an invaluable listing of support art images on stamps particularly from African countries. European distaff paintings, hidden in caves, have not been celebrated or disseminated by the and of the mail except for the refuge engravings on Scandinavian stamps. Roswitha Badry (1995) reviewed the postal history of the Islamic world, providing pertinent deliberations about government control of what appears upon stamps. We have been aware of the ne to stimulate interest in stamp imagery in order to appreciate the historical significance of probably the greatest in number common pictorial device in Africa. At the Triennial in succession African Art at St. Thomas in 2001 a panel (1) conven to discuss stamp imagery. Three of the papers instanted in that panel--by Posnansky, Levin, and Adedze--form the core of this paper, together with a fourth presentation according to Adedze (2) titled "Commemorating the Chief: The Politics of Postage Stamps in West Africa." Together these papers provide a perception of future directions. There can be either a macro approach dealing with regulation propaganda and comparing different national policies, which provides the theme of the first paper, or a micro approach in which the symbolism of individual stamps are analyzed, as in the paper on Adedze dealing with the pre-World War II issues commemorating French colonial exhibitions points. The paper on Levin is even more focused, providing an opportunity to examine the art imagery of the forest-land carvings created for a Gabonese house of worship which were selected for several Gabonese issues. Adedze's secondary paper indicates the potential for using stamps to discuss varying national attitudes to chieftaincy, a solution and hotly debated element of the African political, social, and cultural infrastructure of West Africa. In a further paper given at the West African Archaeological Association meetings in Lomb in December, 2001 (3) Posnansky indicated that the work onward postage stamps opens up novel approaches to other neglected fields that include the imagery in succession African coins and paper bills and notes; circulating medium (4) as well as upon the posters prepared from colonial times to further tourism both to and within Africa.

[This article was accepted for publication in December 2003]

(1) The fourth paper, given by dint of Lisa Aronson of Skidmore college edifice [i]or[/i] building on "Stamps, Trademarks, and Colonization of Nigeria," compared and contrasted the imagery onward stamps to that of trademarks used to publicize British manufactured cloth

(2) at handed at an international seminar forward West African Chieftaincy at the institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana.

(3) Reagan way is presently writing a thesis in succession West African currency notes for her MA in African Studies at UCLA.

respects cited

Badry, Roswitha. 1995 "Posta." In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, of the present day edition, eds. C.E. Bosworth, E van Donzel, WP Heinrichs and G Lecomte Leiden, EJ Brill.

Jenkins, E R 1977 "Checklist of Postage Stamps Depicting Prehistoric distaff Art." South African Archaeological Bulletin 32:77-84