A Brief Overview of Stamps of Indo-China

The French colonial general series was used in French Indochina until 1892. The first distinctive stamps to appear in this area, however, consisted of 5c provisional surcharges made in Cochin China in 1886 – 1887. Stamps of the ‘Commerce’ key types were surcharged with a numeral 5, with or without the abbreviation C.CH. In 1888, 30c stamps were surcharged with two 15s and a diagonal line to facilitate the bisection of the stamps. These provisionals were superseded by the stamps of Indochina in 1892.

Provisional surcharges of 1 or 5c were produced in Annam and Tonquin in January 1888 by surcharging various colonial keytype stamps with the appropriate numeral and the initials A & T. The colonial series was replaced in 1892 by the Indochina series in the ‘Tablet’ design.

The ‘Tablet’ series inscribed ‘Indo-chine’ was used from 1892 to 1904, when a series distinctive to the territory was adopted. Known to collectors as the ‘Grasset’ series (from its designer E. Grasset) it featured the female allegory of France clutching a sword and an olive branch. The stamps were inscribed ‘Indochine-Francais’ though all subsequent issues omitted the word for French. Every denomination from 1c to 10f was typographed on tinted paper, a fashion much favoured by France at that period.

The Grasset series was superseded by a set designed and typographed in black and a contrasting colour. Three designs were used, two of which portrayed Cambodian women while the third showed an Annamite girl. With the usual colour and value changes, this series remained in use until 1927 and was the one used mainly for the overprints of the French post offices in China. The stamps were reissued in 1922 with values expressed in cents and piastres instead of centimes and francs, thus giving rise to some of the most diminutive fractions of value ever found on postage stamps.

Pictorial sets appeared in 1927 and 1931, both being designed by local artists. Three small designs were used for the lower values, depicting a junk, the ruins of Angkor and rice fields while a double sized design showing an Aspara (dancing nymph) was used for the higher denominations. Various denominations were added in the series up to 1941.