Who Issued Stamps For Colonies?

Hey folks, this is probably another noob question, but I can't seem to find any info on it.

At the time when many European countries had colonies (and dominions, protectorates, etc.), were stamps for them issued by the colonies themselves or by the soverign country?
If the latter, were these stamps available for sale in the sovereign country as well?

I see that the Scott Catalogue sometimes lists colonies in their own alphabetical spot, while French colonies, for example, are listed right after France. That is confusing.

In the case of the Netherlands most of the Colonies stamps were printed in the mother country, except in emergencies when shipments by boat took too long.


Peter

It all depends on the specific country, I would assume. The Australian states had stamps printed in England by De la Rue until it was moved out to the colonies themselves and they didn't do very well.

Generally speaking, the stamps were printed in the "mother" country and shipped overseas for use. Of course they couldn't be used anywhere but the intended location, and weren't sold in the "mother" country (as policy, though in fact not always so).

Scott's decisions on placement in a catalog has to do with the political category of the area in question. Colony, possession, territory, department, protectorate, company, dominion, mandate, office, etc. are all different things.

Front section of each Scott catalogue includes listing of "mother county" and respective colonies/posssssions.

"Issued by" and "printed in" are two different animals. Technically all colonial issues were issued by the motherland's. Where they were printed could be anywhere and not necessarily in the sovereign country since it could have been contracted out.

Yeah, that's true. The American Bank Note Company (USA) had contracts for stamps and currency from the world over, as did De La Rue (UK), for example.

"Available for sale", yes,in particular venues, "available for use", no. The Vichy government issued various omnibus sets, including for areas where its writ didn't run and which were thus never used. I suppose that these were distributed to dealers - or were they available from some central point?

There's a note in Ascher's Ganzsachenkatalog regarding Type I and Type II postal cards for the German colonies and offices abroad:

"Die Karten I sind in dem Auslandspostämtern bzw. den Kolonien ausgegeben worden, dagegen die Karten II sowie die kursiv gedruckten n u r in Berlin am Kolonialschalter, können also regelrecht gebraucht n I c h t vorkommen."

(The Type I cards were issued in the post offices abroad or in the colonies, but the Type II cards, as well as those indicated by italics, were only available in Berlin at the colonial counter and therefore cannot legitimately occur used.)

In the case of Malta - which was a British colony - stamps were issued by the local colonial government, not by the British authorities in London. The colonial government would order stamps through the Crown Agents (CA) which would then deal with the printer (most often De La Rue, but several other UK printers were also used after the 1920s) that would produce and supply the consignment of stamps to Malta.

Through the CA as an intermediary, the printer would send proofs to the Malta Post Office for approval, so local authorities had a say in what was issued. The above situation applied to postage stamps, revenue stamps and postal stationery. I believe a similar situation existed in most other British colonies.

Another example of the local authorities' say is in what happened to the printing plates after they were no longer needed - in most cases they would have requested the destruction of the plate, but in some cases (including Malta and Johore) the local authorities requested that the obsolete plate be defaced and sent to the colony. Due to this a number of plates of colonial-era stamps and stationery ended up in Malta, instead of remaining at London where they would have likely been destroyed.

For Germany, all normal, non-provisional postage for the colonies was printed in Germany. The note to which erilaz refers above is typical for the German colonies -- there are many issues that were never actually available or used in the colonies, but were available in Berlin. The Reichspost kept selling the stamps to collectors at the collectors' window of the Berlin PO for years after the colonies were lost.

Thanks all for the input.
By the answers given, it seems that each situation was different and case-specific for the various European colonizing states.



That is similar to what was happening at the same time in the Nazi puppet-state of Vichy France, where it seems that the postal authorities continued to issue stamps for many of their ex-colonies, even several years after these had defected or had been liberated by the Allies.
I wonder if that was part of a "scheme" to fool collectors and make revenue, selling them stamps which were never intended to be used at such.

Nobody was being fooled. Anyone buying stamps in France knew where Vichy was still in control and where it was not. And they weren't "ex-colonies".