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India

Convention States, Native Feudatory States

and Offices Abroad

Country Categories: Africa since independence - Asia - Caribbean - Central and North America - Europe - Middle East - Oceania - Plebiscites - South America

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Before the Feudatory and Convention States came the First Asian Stamp from Scinde

These links take you to details and images of all the all the stamps for the Feudatory and Convention States (still being built).
Offices Abroad and Military stamps are below.

Minkus [1] describes Indian postal services thus (including quaint abbreviations),

"From the 16th cent on, local post services existed, operated by the Indian Princes, using mainly runners (daks or dawks), but also horses & camels. These services were at first confined to official mail; only gradually were private individuals permited to use them.
After 1862 many of the rulers founded public postal systems (in the modern sense) & also issued stamps for the prepayment of postage. These separate systems existed alongside, & in partial competition with, the expanding system of British India. Stamps of these Feudatory States were valid for postage within the individual states only (except Cochin and Travancore which had a reciprocal agreement). The rates were determined locally and were in most cases lower than rates of the Indian Govt.
In order to eliminate this competition the Postmaster General of India absorbed, over a period of years, many of these systems.
Btw 1864-86, 6 states joined their postal systems to that of India by a postal convention. They then used stamps of India optd with their own names. These Convention States were: Chamba Faridkot, Gwalior, Jhind, Nabha & Patiala. Faridkot issued stamps only until Mar 31 1901.
After establishment of Dominion [1947] (later Republic) of India, many small states were grouped administratively into larger states. 2 of the latter, Travancore-Cochin and Rajasthan, issued stamps.
On Apr 1 1950 stamps of the Republic of India superseded stamps of all local postal systems still in existence. Stamps of the latter remained valid until May 1 1950 (Feudatory States), Jan 1 1951 (Convention States), July 1, 1951 (Travancore-Cochin).
Stamps of the Feudatory States definitely did postal duty, but many of them were officially reprinted to fill orders from foreign stamp dealers.
Credit: Harrison D S Haverbeck."

Office	First Issue	Sequence #	Notes
Offices Abroad and Military Stamps
China Expeditionary Force	1900
Indian Expeditionary Force	1914
Korea Custodial Unit	1953
Indian UN Force in Congo	1962
Indian UN Force in Gaza	1965
International Commission in Indo-China
- Cambodia	1954
- Laos	1954
- Vietnam	1954

Sources: Mink1 [1].

Page created 28 Dec 2015

Page updated 15 Jul 2016