Postage Stamps and Postal History of The Comoros - Before The Joining To Madagascar in 1911

Before The Joining To Madagascar in 1911

A very few numbers of letters posted before 1900 in the Comoros are known. The oldest came from Mayotte in December 1850 and do not bear a postage stamp.

Mayotte became a French colony at the beginning of the 1840s after commander Passot bought it to sultan Andriantsouly.

The first stamps from the Imperial Eagle series, common to all French colonies, are sent late 1861-start 1862. They were dispatched between Mayotte and Nosy Be, a northern Madagascar island. The oldest known stamped letter from Mayotte is dated December 1863.

When the French influence extended to Mohéli, Grande Comore and Anjouan, the Frenchmen must have used the postal service based in Mayotte. Eagle stamps and French stamps (non perforated in the colonies) were certainly used. But, on the datestamp, it was always written "Mayotte and dependencies" (Mayotte et dépendances). Unless the address of the sender or the letter can give hints, it is impossible to recognize the real origin of a Comorian letter of that time. Until the 1870s, the postage stamp itself was cancelled with rhombus of points with a hole in the middle ; it is impossible to know where an unstuck stamp was used.

Following excess by French adventurer Léon Humblot against Comorian people, the French Navy intervened in the archipelago and imposed the French administration. Mayotte was kept at the center of the new organisation.

Progressively, like all French colonies, each island received stamps with its name : the postal administration was victim of a stamp traffic between low-valued currency colonies and high-valued currency colonies. Mayotte and the "sultanat d'Anjouan" received them in November 1892, Grande Comore in November 1897 and Mohéli in 1906. Twenty values were issued in Mayotte, Nineteen in Anjouan and Grande Comore, sixteen in Mohéli.