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Rčunion
300th Anniversary of French Settlement in Rčunion

300th Anniversary of French Settlement in Rčunion
The high value in Vichy France's "300th Anniversary of French Settlement in Rčunion" was never
placed on sale on the island because it fell to Free French forces on November 30, 1942.

A set of air post stamps issued in 1943 by the Vichy regime in France but never sold on Rčunion commemorated the 300th Anniversary of French Settlement of the island in 1642. Those settlers were a dozen mutineers exiled from Madagascar.

Somewhat surprisingly, the French are showing landing spices on the island rather than loading them on their ships. Located in the western Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar, Rčunion was not a "spice island" until the French introduced cloves and nutmeg. In 1748, an adventurer named Pierre Poivre (1719-1786) had presented the Compagnie des Indes Orientales (East India Company) with a plan to collect spice plants from different parts of the world. Poivre, who later became the intendant of the Mascarene Islands (1767-1772), consisting of Isle de France (present-day Mauritius), Bourbon (present-day La Rčunion) and Rodrigues, strove to break a Dutch monopoly by smuggling cloves and nutmeg from the Maluku Islands. It took decades for his plan to "take root" but today some call the island "the land of spice and coffee."

Stamp Set for 300th Anniversary of French Settlement in Rčunion
Complete set of six air post stamps.


Bibliography

Brixius, Dorit. "A Pepper acquiring Nutmeg: Pierre Poivre, The French Spice Quest and the Role of Mediators in
     Southeast Asia, 1740s to 1770s." Journal of the Western Society for French History. Michigan Publishing. 2015. Web.
     5 Feb. 2018. Web. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0642292.0043.006.

Govender-Ypma, Ishay. "Reunion Island – Land of Spice and Coffee, And Cultural Overlap."
     Food & the Fabulous. 10 Oct. 2014. Web. 5 Feb. 2018.
     https://www.foodandthefabulous.com/travel/reunion-island-land-spice-and-coffee/.

"Rčunion." Wikipeida: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
     2 Feb. 2018. Web. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rčunion.

"Rčunion." Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue. 2015.

Rossiter, Stuart and John Flower. The Stamp Atlas. London: Macdonald and Co., 1986.


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