Use of Franchise Militaire (F.M.) Stamps From the Colonies During the Era of the Group Type
Presented by Ed Grabowski, Director of the France and Colonies Philatelic Society (US) on June 27, 2021. While developing a collection of the postal history of the French Colonial Allegorical Group Type as used by all of the colonies, he also started collecting all of the peripheral aspects of colonial postal history that occurred during this era. Among these was use of the French Franchise Militaire stamps. Little has been published on the creation and use of these stamps. Over the past 45 years he amassed about 50 of these covers, and they formed the basis for this presentation.
Aspects covered include the reasons for the creation of these stamps, the examples used during the 1901 – 1915 period, the misuse of the stamps and representative uses from the colonies from which I have been able to find examples. This has permitted the development of a number of new conclusions about their use or lack thereof, which has not been obvious in the existing literature.