Old Countries Renamed

Hello all, last summer I concentrated on buying old pre-1960 albums on either ebay or delcampe. So finally with the onset of winter here in Montana its time to discover what I have and inventory and mouth them.

One thing I noticed is their are older countries example Abyssinia now known as Ethiopia. My new Albums don't have a section for Abyssinia. I am combining my collection I started with an uncle 30 years ago into on rescanned, wider spaced stamps pictures.

So I was considering under Ethiopia section creating a sub section for Abyssinia.

I am wondering how every one else handle these older countries that no longer exist.

Mostly put it under the new county name. If political entitie no longer exsists (not just a name change), I usualy put it near the country that swallowed it u.

Yep my method is pretty much what joe1225us said!

Each album editor has to make his or her own peace with this issue...are you using a commercial album? If so, at least some of the stamps should have spots at the beginning of Ethiopia (using your example).

If I was making my own pages, then I would probably make my choice based on the primary era of my collection. If most of my stamps were older, I'd use the old names. If most of my stamps were newer, I'd use the new names, and probably title the pages "ETHIOPIA" at the top, and then put in a subheading along the lines of "Issued as Abyssinia" and later on in the album "Issued as Ethiopia".

That's probably what I would do, but it has to make sense to you.

Thanks all,, I would post a pcture of my sheets but well you know copy rights issue,,,,

Basically I check my new albums to see if there is a section is not I make my own under the present country name, kinda like how you see "Air Postage" heading but the old name there.

As usual thanks for the inputs

I've moved the older country names to the newer country names in my album: Upper Volta-Burkina Faso, Persia-Iran, Siam-Thailand, Jugoslavia-Yugoslavia. Burma (Myanmar) is the only exception; Scott still lists these stamps under Burma.

Coincidently this is something I am working on at the minute. In the last two weeks, I have printed out cover sheets for my world album....i have printed out 200 pages (193 UN members plus 7 non members which are defacto nations and more or less recognised by UPU). On the pages, I have included brief information...capital city, language, date of first stamp.
I am revamping my albums for two reasons....one is name changes. In the 1970s I used a gummed book bought in Gibbons in London and it was easy to cut off name tags. Many are no longer valid. HEnce the update ....and as a general rule, I think a country should be called what it wants to be called. ....eg my albums currently show "North Korea" and "South Korea" but by 21st century standards this is Democratic Republic of Korea and Republic of Korea.
There are of course simple name changes....Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo, KHmer Republic/Cambodia
Apparently Myanmar calls itself by this name but does not expect us to comply.
The question of successor countries is slightly different ....there is a case to be made that Russia and USSR have a continuity. Personally I have USSR in my "Former Countries" album with Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia etc.
Flags is another issue. I am sure a lot of us illustrate an album with flags....again in my case a gummed sheet of about 170 stickers bought in Gibbons decades ago. This is also out of date....not just in terms of new countries....but in terms of design.

The easies method would be to keep your albums in the same order as the stamp catalog you are using .

Siam, Ceylon. East Pakistan just to name a few.

I think putting the old names with the new is best since it allows you to follow the full philatelic history of a nation from the start.

FitzjamesHorse makes some excellent points about the complexity of country name changes. It's fine to say we should put stamps under whatever name a country currently calls itself, but does that mean remounting all the stamps from pages with the older country name onto (presumably nearly identical) pages showing the new country name? That's a lot of work just to update a name. The "Congo Free State" became the "Belgian Congo" in 1908 and then became the "Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville)" in 1960. That was followed by a name change to "Zaire" in the 1970s, then back to just "Republic of the Congo" in the 1980s sometime. Whew! Imagine all the mounting and remounting of stamps you'd have to go through -- if you lived that long!

Part of the problem is that when you begin an album, there's a tendency to want to "freeze" the names of countries so you don't have to change them again later. Very understandable, but a bit silly (in my opinion) to still have stamps listed under the "Belgian Congo" today when it hasn't been Belgian for over 50 years. If your collection is going to make any historical sense, I think your Belgian Congo stamps have to be mounted at the beginning of your "Republic of Congo" (its modern name) pages.

I'd simply move older pages to wherever they belong alphabetically. I'd put "Abyssinia" pages at the beginning of "Ethiopia". As for the possibility of confusion when paging through albums, I'd just remember that Ethiopia began as Abyssinia. The same for "Persia" which became "Iran," "Siam" became "Thailand," and so on. Combining pages gives a more historical appearance to albums.

It would be possible to mount a blank page at the beginning of name-change countries on which you note the name changes and their dates, if you wanted to do that.

Of course, buying a newer album with the country names already modernized solves this problem. Any older "Abyssinia" stamps you have get mounted under "Ethiopia" (presumably) and so on. Or are there album publishers, I wonder, that print albums with country pages under their separate names, with separate pages for "Siam" and "Thailand" and so on? I think that's strange -- but I know the Scott catalogue does this. It doesn't seem very historical at all to do this as a country is continuous, not different countries with different names.
In just the 20th century, Italy was a republican monarchy, a fascist dictatorship, then a parliamentary republic. But it was always "Italy". The changes in its government didn't make it a different country. Closer to home, Canada went through a number of governmental changes from Dominion status onward. But clearly it remained the same country throughout that century or more. You would never have one section in your album for "Dominion of Canada" and another for "Canada (Independent Republic). The stamps of British India always precede the stamps of independent India under the one heading "India," as they should.

Yet for the WWII period, some countries' stamps under foreign occupation are not included as part of that country's stamp history. I've always found that strange. This goes for areas militarily occupied by Japan, Germany, and Italy. For example, the German occupation of Poland from 1939 on resulted in stamps being issued for Poland. Do those stamps belong under "Poland" or "Germany"? I'd prefer to see them under the country where they were used, meaning "Poland". The same for Japanese territories occupied in Asia, etc.

I suppose the logic of excluding German occupation stamps from Poland pages is that the stamps were not issued by the Polish government. Yet they were used in Poland to send mail inside Poland . . . Any thoughts?

Naming a country what it names itself seems logical, but a lot of them don't always call themselves what we English-speakers call them -- Deutschland not Germany, Polska not Poland, Republica Dominicana not Dominican Republic. And Helvetia...!
If we make our own pages, should we be consistent one way or the other? But what then of those countries with non-Roman alphabets? The album manufacturers have always consistent in being inconsistent.
Then there's the matter of political correctness. Has anyone else noticed that here in the States some insist on still calling it Burma even though the "bad guys" who run it call it Myanmar. But they're going along with the "good guys" who insist that Ivory Coast can only be referred to as Cote d'Ivoire.
Do what works for you! It's YOUR collection!

Its VERY complex indeed Drew. And I didnt fully resolve it over the last month when I was preparing exactly 200 cover sheets for my world collection of 193 UN nations plus Vatican, Palestine, Taiwan, Kosovo, Northern Cyprus, Sov Military Order of Malta and United Nations itself.
The cover sheets give some factual information (capital city, population). But there are curiosities. ...probably 200. Some nations. BRitain for example predates stamps and I give a Tudor date for its "establishment" but in the case of USA, I used a date of independence. In many cases, post offices were established by colonial powers or outside the normal colonial norm.
The question, I think is whether they are "successor" countries or completely different.
In the case of Germany, in 1871 the Empire is formed out of the German states and that is I think consistent to 1945. The Empire, Republic and Nazi period being (in my view and some will differ) a straight line. Arguably the two states after the Secone World War and not fully successor states.
And I dont think the unified Germany is a successor state to either East or West...but IS a successor to Germany 1871-1945. I have solved the problem by having "Germany" from 1871 to date in my "live" albums and East and West archived with dead countries.
There is I think a traditional continuity in India from Victorian times thru to date. Indeed it is likewise for just about every place....Ceylon, Mauritius, Nigeria. I keep them behind the same cover sheet but where possible I use different pages but I dont move British Raj stamps from a page I mounted them in (alongside post 1947 issues) in the mid 1960s when I did not consider such deep questions.
As a rule, I dont seek out stamps from the colonial period. I prefer "modern stamps".
I think there are maybe two ways to look at stamps ...from the perspective of "postal history" there is a linkage between British stamps over-printed for Qatar, Bahrain etc and the modern states. In terms of the "ethos" of the nations of Qatar, Bahrain etc, there is no linkage.
Say in the case of India, there is no "Indian" ethos shown on pre-1947 stamps. But the tradition of continuity outweighs this anomoly.
But in the cases of say Angola, Algeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and most others, I have put the colonial stamps in the archive album with the "dead countries".

I agree 90% with EdziuMM. There are no rules.
But I think its only right to call a country as it likes to be called in our own languages.
I note that on my blank album pages made in 1960s and 1970s, I labelled countries as North Korea, South Korea, West Germany, East Germany.
When I prepared the cover sheets last month, I used the wording, Democratic Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea and Germany.