Advice On How To Search For A Certain Topic

I've not learned all the vernacular and jargon.

By way of sorting through an old collection picked up from the collector's descendants, I've stumbled across quite a few stamps for locations when they had colonial names and not their current names. It is easy enough to figure out where they are from by googling the name if I don't know it.

However, in the collecting world, is there term for this special interest other than "colonial" or "french colonial" or "dutch/german/??? colonial"

I like to read up on an area I'm interested in relative to its local history. read "Why is this on the stamp?"

I am not sure if I understand the question.
If you Google the name on the stamp you usually find a history through Wikipedia


Peter

Sorry for the lack of clarity.

Is there a special term for collecting old colonials? Sometimes there are unique terms that are not obvious to the novice. I'm asking if there is a special term.

Yeah. . . .I'm probably making this harder than it has to be .

No, I do not believe there is.


Peter

I think the philatelic way to say it would be "specialization in colonies"

It is not a "Topic" (i.e. Topical, relating to the subject matter of the stamp, not the place of origin)

And "special-ty"(-ize, -ization) would be the philatelic vernacular for "special interest"

No specific term for what you describe. Specialization, collecting area, and collecting interest have all been used to describe the concept.

WabashandErie, the term you may be looking for is "Dead Country". There is even a website devoted to them. Ironically, the website itself is "dead" as it has not been updated in several years.

https://www.dcstamps.com

In auction catalogs, those countries are often grouped together named "French Colonies", "German Colonies", etc. A friend of mine is a collector of Spanish Colonies. It's a very popular way of being a Worldwide collector but limiting the scope to a more manageable size.

... picks up ladle

In terms of stamp collection jargon ... not so much ... British Empire for the early years?, British Commonwealth later years? Sometimes it's just British followed by the geographical area .. British Oceania, British Asia, etc.

I am not a much of a specialist, but I am partial to that mid-century window when former colonies became free and self governing ... Post Colonial? ... nah ... they wrote "Independence" on their stamps and we wrote new names on album pages. One could just stop there .. but should one?
There are many words for the history of colonization. and it is worth reading up on ...