Vanuatu officially
the Republic of Vanuatu, is a Pacific island nation located in the
South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is
some 1,750 kilometres east of northern Australia, 540
kilometres northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea,
southeast of the Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji. Vanuatu was
first inhabited by Melanesian people. The first Europeans to visit the
islands were a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Fernandes
de Queirós, who arrived on the largest island in 1606. As the
Portuguese and Spanish monarchies had been unified under the king of
Spain in 1580, Queirós claimed the archipelago for Spain, as part of
the colonial Spanish East Indies, and named it La Austrialia del
Espíritu Santo. In the 1880s, France and the United Kingdom
claimed parts of the archipelago, and in 1906 they agreed on a
framework for jointly managing the archipelago as the New Hebrides
through an Anglo–French Condominium. An independence movement arose in
the 1970s, and the Republic of Vanuatu was founded in 1980.
[R1]
Between 1906 and 1980, the islands were an Anglo-French Condominium. One
of the outcomes of this arrangement was that both countries issued
their own postage stamps for the islands, although towards the end of
the Condominium, there were joint issues with the initials ER (Elizabeth Regina)
for the UK, and RF (République Française) for France.Modern stamps have been
under the name Vanuatu. From
1887 to 1899, the people of the New Hebrides received their
international mail from Australasian New Hebrides Company steamers
every three weeks. Almost all of the country’s 83 islands were serviced
by these steamer ships, proving to be a great, but unprofitable service
for the times. The Australian Post Office for a time was contracted to
bring in the mail, but it wasn’t really until 1910 when Port Vila’s new
post office was open to the public that the country began to have its
own postal identity. The Condominium administration ran the
post office in typical New Hebridean fashion – selling stamps in both
francs and pence, however the service quickly became a good revenue
earner for the administration. [R2]
Official stamps of Vanuatu related to Paleontology: Charles Dawrin
23.09.2009 "Bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin"
Other stamps to consider
02.03.2005 "The pacific's original explorers: lapita people"
Notes: [O1] As master
seafarers and pioneers, the Lapita people were a migrating and mobile
culture. They are celebrated as the first Neolithic inhabitants of much
of the western Pacific and especially pioneers of remote Oceania –
eastern Melanesia and Polynesia. The Lapita people, named after their
finely decorated pottery, have been traced from Eastern Indonesia and
the Philippines where there had been a population for at least 40,000
years. It is estimated that the Lapita people arrived in Vanuatu over
3,000 years ago directly from the Solomon Islands.
Design of these stamps are very similar to stamps of
Pitcairn islands 2006 and 2007.
References: [R1] More information about the Vanuatu are on
WikipediaWikiTravel [R2] More information about postal history of Vanuatu on:
Wikipedia