Rare Stamps & Postal History of the World; Hawkins II - European Colonies
May 12-13, 2020
Our May 12, 2020 sale was prepared in anticipation of London 2020 World Stamp Exhibition. While the show has been rescheduled, this auction will take place as scheduled. There is an important collection of Great Britain and British Commonwealth, with many individual Colonies offered intact. In addition, there are hundreds of better individual lots of Inverted Centers of the World, French Colonies Postal History selection from the Lorenz correspondence to Trieste, excellent range of European countries, with Italy and Colonies, especially Fezzan, Poland, Russia, as well as rarities from Japan, Korea and more. There are many attractive and substantial Large Lots and Collections, often fully scanned.
| Images | Description | Current Bid |
 | Lot #1518 ITALIAN WORLD WAR II OCCUPATION ISSUES FEZZAN - French Occupation 1943 selection of 24 covers cards, variety of franking and combinations, handstamped on 50c on 50c brown (Sass.PA3), other usages include Fezzan and Ghadames, several items with 1951 surcharges, high values to 480fr, occasional toning, generally fine-v.f., many signed, several with certificates (The Military Territory of Fezzan-Ghadames was a territory in the southern part of the former Italian colony of Libya controlled by the French from 1943 until Libyan independence in 1951. It was part of the Allied administration of Libya. Free French forces from French Chad occupied the area that was the former Italian Southern Military Territory in 1943] and made several requests to annex administratively their Fezzan to the French colonial empire. The administrative personnel retained the former Italian bureaucrats. The British administration began the training of a badly needed Libyan civil service. Italian administrators continued to be employed in Tripoli and the Italian legal code remained in effect for the duration of the war. In the lightly populated Fezzan region, a French military administration formed a counterpart to the British operation. With British approval, Free French forces moved north from Chad to take control of the territory in January 1943. French administration was directed by a staff stationed in Sabha, but it was largely exercised through Fezzan notables of the family of Sayf an Nasr. At the lower echelons, French troop commanders acted in both military and civil capacities according to customary French practice in the Algerian Sahara. In the west, Ghat was attached to the French military region of southern Algeria and Ghadames, the French command of southern Tunisia, eventually giving rise to Libyan nationalist fears that French intentions might include the ultimate detachment of Fezzan from Libya. Fezzan joined Tripolitania and Cyrenaica to form the Kingdom of Libya on 24 December 1951. It was the first country to achieve independence through the United Nations and one of the first former European possessions in Africa to gain independence)  Catalog #Sass.1/40 Catalog Value €354,600 | Unsold |
